PEOPLE   OF  DESTINY 

Americans  as  I  Saw  Them 
At    Home    and    Abroad 


PHILIP   GIBBS 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY- 


Americans  as  I  saw  them 
at  Home  and  Abroad 

by 

Philip  Gibbs 

Author  of 
"Now  It  Can  Be  Told" 


afjiW^4^^ 


HARPER   &l   BROTHERS   PUBLISHERS 
NEW   YORK   AND    LONDON 


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People  of  Destiny 


Copyright,  1920,  by  Harper  &  Brothers 

Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America 

Published  September,  1920 

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CONTENTS 


I.  The  Adventure  of  Life  in  New  York 

II.  Some  People  I  Met  in  America  .    . 

III.  Things  I  Like  in  the  United  States 
.  IV.  America's  New  Place  in  the  World 
t  V.     What  England  Thinks  of  America 

VI.   Americans  in  Europe 


PAGE 
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35 


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425505 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

PHILIP   GIBBS Frontispiece 

A  RELIEF  FROM  BOREDOM  AFTER  OFFICE  HOURS  Facing  p.     42 
THE     SOCIAL     ATMOSPHERE     OF     AN     AMERICAN 

POST-OFFICE "             72 

I  LIKED  THE  GREETING  OF  THE  TRAIN  CONDUCTOR  ' '             96 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 


PEOPLE    OF   DESTINY 


THE    ADVENTURE    OF    LIFE    IN    NEW   YORK 

I  HAD  the  luck  to  go  to  New  York  for  the 
first  time  when  the  ordinary  life  of  that 
City  of  Adventure — always  so  vital  and 
dynamic  in  activity — was  intensified  by  the 
emotion  of  historic  days.  The  war  was  over, 
and  the  warriors  were  coming  home  with  the 
triumph  of  victory  as  the  reward  of  courage; 
but  peace  was  still  delayed  and  there  had 
not  yet  crept  over  the  spirits  of  the  people 
the  staleness  and  disillusionment  that  always 
follow  the  ending  of  war,  when  men  say: 
"What  was  the  use  of  it,  after  all?  Where 
are  gratitude  and  justice?  Who  pays  me  for 
the  loss  of  my  leg?"  .  .  .  The  emotion  of  New 
York  life  was  visible  in  its  streets.  The  city 
itself,  monstrous,  yet  dreamlike  and  mystical 
as  one  sees  it  first  rising  to  fantastic  shapes 
through  the  haze  of  dawn  above  the  waters 


.'   *  ,.,/J. .PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

*of  the  Hudson,  seemed  to  be  excited  by  its 
own  historical  significance.  There  was  a  vi- 
bration about  it  as  sunlight  splashed  its  gold 
upon  the  topmost  stories  of  the  skyscrapers 
and  sparkled  in  the  thousand  windows  of  the 
Woolworth  Tower  and  flung  black  bars  of 
shadow  across  the  lower  blocks.  Banners 
wTere  flying  everywhere  in  the  streets  that 
go  straight  and  long  between  those  perpen- 
dicular clilfs  of  masonry,  and  the  wind  that 
comes  blowing  up  the  two  rivers  ruffled 
them.  They  were  banners  of  rejoicing,  but 
reminders  also  of  the  service  and  sacrifice  of 
each  house  from  which  they  were  hanging, 
with  golden  stars  of  death  above  the  heads 
of  the  living  crowds  surging  there  below 
them.  In  those  decorations  of  New  York  I 
saw  the  imagination  of  a  people  conscious  of 
their  own  power,  and  with  a  dramatic  in- 
stinct able  to  impress  the  multitudes  with 
the  glory  and  splendor  of  their  achievement. 
It  was  the  same  sense  of  drama  that  is  re- 
vealed commercially  in  the  genius  of  adver- 
tisement which  startled  me  when  I  first 
walked  down  Broadway,  dazzled  by  moving 
pictures  of  light,  by  flashing  signs  that 
shouted  to  me  from  high  heaven  to  buy 
chewing-gum   and  to  go  on  chewing;    and 


THE  ADVENTURE  OF  LIFE  IN  NEW  YORK 

squirming,  wriggling,  revolving  snakes  of 
changing  color  that  burned  letters  of  fire 
into  my  brain,  so  that  even  now  in  remem- 
brance my  eyes  are  scorched  with  the  imprint 
of  a  monstrous  kitten  unrolling  an  endless 
reel  of  cotton.  The  "Welcome  Home"  of 
American  troops  was  an  advertisement  of 
American  manhood,  idealized  by  emotion; 
and  it  was  designed,  surely,  by  an  .artist 
whose  imagination  had  been  touched  by  the 
audacity  of  the  master-builders  of  New  York 
who  climb  to  the  sky  with  their  houses.  I 
think  it  was  inspired  also  by  the  vision  of 
the  moving-picture  kings  who  resurrect  the 
gorgeous  life  of  Babylon,  and  re-establish 
the  court  of  Cleopatra,  for  Theda  Bara,  the 
"Movie  Queen."  When  the  men  of  the 
Twenty-seventh  Division  of  New  York  came 
marching  home  down  Fifth  Avenue  they 
passed  through  triumphal  arches  of  white 
plaster  that  seemed  solid  enough  to  last  for 
centuries,  though  they  had  grown  high,  like 
Jack's  beanstalk,  in  a  single  night;  and  the 
troops  glanced  sideways  at  a  vast  display  of 
Indian  trophies  with  tattered  colors  like 
those  of  sunburnt  wigwams  where  the  spears 
of  the  "braves"  were  piled  above  the  shields 
of  fallen  warriors. 

3 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

"Like  an  undergraduate's  cozy  corner," 
said  an  unkind  wit,  and  New  York  laughed, 
but  liked  the  symbolism  of  those  shields  and 
went  on  with  astonished  eyes  to  gaze  at  the 
masterpiece  of  Chalfln,  the  designer  of  it  all, 
which  was  a  necklace  like  a  net  of  precious 
jewels,  suspended,  between  two  white  pillars 
surmounted  by  stars,  across  the  Avenue. 
At  night  strong  searchlights  played  upon  this 
necklace,  and  at  the  end  of  those  bars  of 
white  radiance,  shot  through  the  darkness, 
the  hanging  jewels  swayed  and  glittered  with 
a  thousand  delicate  colors  like  diamonds, 
rubies,  emeralds,  and  sapphires.  Night  after 
night,  as  I  drove  down  Fifth  Avenue,  I 
turned  in  the  car  to  look  back  at  the  aston- 
ishing picture  of  that  triumphal  archway,  and 
saw  how  the  long  tide  of  cars  behind  was 
caught  by  the  searchlights  so  that  all  their 
metal  was  like  burnished  gold  and  silver; 
and  how  the  faces  of  dense  crowds  staring  up 
at  the  suspended  necklace  were  all  white — 
dead-white  as  Pierrot's;  and  how  the  sky 
above  New  York  and  the  tall  clifflike  masses 
of  masonry  on  each  side  of  Fifth  Avenue 
were  fingered  by  the  outer  radiance  of  the 
brightness  that  was  blinding  in  the  heart  of 
the  city.     To  me,  a  stranger  in  New  York, 

4 


THE  ADVENTURE  OF  LIFE  IN  NEW  YORK 

unused  to  the  height  of  its  buildings  and  to 
the  rush  of  traffic  in  its  streets,  these  illumi- 
nations of  victory  were  the  crowning  touch  of 
fantasy,  and  I  seemed  to  be  in  a  dream  of 
some  City  of  the  Future,  among  people  of  a 
new  civilization,  strange  and  wonderful. 
The  soldiers  of  the  Twenty-seventh  Division 
were  not  overcome  by  emotion  at  this  dis- 
play in  their  honor.  "That's  all  right," 
they  said,  grinning  at  the  cheering  crowds, 
"and  when  do  we  eat?"  Those  words  re- 
minded me  of  Tommy  Atkins,  who  would  go 
through  the  hanging-gardens  of  Babylon  it- 
self— if  the  time-machine  were  switched 
back — with  the  same  shrewd  humor. 

The  adventure  of  life  in  New  York,  al- 
ways startling  and  exciting,  I  am  certain,  to 
a  man  or  woman  who  enters  its  swirl  as  a 
stranger,  was  more  stirring  at  the  time  of  my 
first  visit  because  of  this  eddying  influence 
of  war's  back-wash.  The  city  was  over- 
crowded with  visitors  from  all  parts  of  the 
United  States  who  had  come  in  to  meet  their 
home-coming  soldiers,  and  having  met  them 
stayed  awhile  to  give  these  boys  a  good  time 
after  their  exile.  This  floating  population 
of  New  York  flowed  into  all  the  hotels  and 
restaurants  and  theaters.     Two  new  hotels — 

5 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

the  Commodore  and  the  Pennsylvania — were 
opened  just  before  I  came,  and,  with  two 
thousand  bedrooms  each,  had  no  room  to 
spare,  and  did  not  reduce  the  population  of 
the  Plaza,  Vanderbilt,  Manhattan,  Biltmore, 
or  Ritz-Carlton.  I  watched  the  social  life  in 
those  palaces  and  found  it  more  entertaining 
than  the  most  sensational  "movie"  with  a 
continuous  performance.  The  architects  of 
those  American  hotels  have  vied  with  one 
another  in  creating  an  atmosphere  of  richness 
and  luxury.  They  have  been  prodigal  in  the 
use  of  marble  pillars  and  balustrades,  more 
magnificent  than  Roman.  They  have  gone 
to  the  extreme  limit  of  taste  in  gilding  the 
paneled  walls^and  ceilings  from  which  they 
have  suspended  enormous  candelabra  like 
those  in  the  palace  of  Versailles.  I  lost  my- 
self in  the  vastness  of  tea-rooms  and  lounges, 
and  when  invited  to  a  banquet  found  it 
necessary  to  bring  my  ticket,  because  often 
there  are  a  dozen  banquets  in  progress  in  one 
hotel,  and  there  is  a  banqueting-room  on 
every  floor.  When  I  passed  up  in  the  ele- 
vator of  one  hotel  I  saw  the  different  crowds 
in  the  corridors  surging  toward  those  great 
lighted  rooms  where  the  tables  were  spread 
with  flowers,  and  from  which  came  gusts  of 

6 


THE  ADVENTURE  OF  LIFE  IN  NEW  YORK 

"jazz"  music  or  the  opening  bars  of  "The 
Star-spangled  Banner." 

In  all  the  dining-rooms  there  rises  the 
gusty  noise  of  many  conversations  above  the 
music  of  an  orchestra  determined  to  be  heard, 
and  between  the  bars  of  a  Leslie  Stuart 
waltz,  or  on  the  last  beat  of  the  "Humoreske," 
a  colored  waiter  says,  "Chicken  okra,  sah?" 
or  "Clam  chowder?"  and  one  hears  the 
laughing  words  of  a  girl  who  asks,  "Do  you 
mind  if  I  powder  my  nose?  "  and  does  so  with 
a  glance  at  a  little  gold  mirror  and  a  dab 
from  a  little  gold  box.  The  vastness,  and 
the  overwhelming  luxury,  of  the  New  York 
hotels  was  my  first  and  strongest  impres- 
sion in  this  city,  after  I  had  recovered 
from  the  sensation  of  the  high  fantastic 
buildings;  but  it  occurred  to  me  very 
quickly  that  this  luxury  of  architecture  and 
decoration  has  no  close  reference  to  the  life 
of  the  people.  They  are  Ojoly^yisitors  in  la 
vie  de  luxe — and  do  not  belong  to  it,  and  do 
not  let  it  enter  into  their  souls  or  bodies. 
In  a  wealthier,  more  expansive  way,  they  are 
like  the  city  clerks  and  their  girls  in  London 
who  pay  eighteenpence  for  a  meal  in  marble 
halls  at  Lyon's  Popular  Cafe  and  sit  around 
a  gilded  menu-card,  saying,  "Isn't  it  won- 

2  7 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

derful  .  .  .  and  shall  we  go  home  by  tram?" 
There  are  many  rich  people  in  New  York — 
more,  I  suppose,  than  in  any  other  city  of  the 
world — but,  apart  from  cosmopolitan  men 
and  women  who  have  luxury  beneath  their 
skins,  there  is  no  innate  sense  of  it  in  the 
social  life  of  these  peopIeT  In  the  hotel 
palaces,  as  well  as  in  the  private  mansions 
along  Fifth  Avenue  and  Riverside  Drive,  all 
their  outward  splendor  does  not  alter  the 
simplicity  and  honesty  of  their  character. 
THeyremain  essentially  "middle-class"  and 
have  none  of  the  easy  licentiousness  of  that 
European  aristocracy  which,  before  the  war, 
flaunted  its  wealth  and  its  vice  in  Paris, 
Vienna,  Monte  Carlo,  and  other  haunts 
where  the  cocottes  of  the  world  assembled  to 
barter  their  beauty,  and  where  idle  men  went 
from  boredom  to  boredom  in  search  of  subtle 
forms  of  pleasure.  American  women  of 
wealth  spend  vast,  sums  of  money  on  dress, 
and  there  is  the  glitter  of  diamonds  at  many 
dinner-tables,  but  most  of  them  have  too 
much  shrewdness  of  hunior  to  play  the 
"vamp,"  and  the  social  code  to  which  they 
belong  is  swept  clean  by_  cojnmoiL_&£nse. 
"My  dear,"  said  an  American  hostess  who 
belongs  to  one  of  the  old  rich  families  of 


THE  ADVENTURE  OF  LIFE  IN  NEW  YORK 

New  York,  "forgive  me  for  wearing  my  dia- 
monds to-night.  It  must  shock  you,  coming 
from  scenes  of  ruin  and  desolation."  This 
dowager  duchess  of  New  York,  as  I  like  to 
think  of  her,  wore  her  diamonds  as  the  mayor 
of  a  provincial  town  in  England  wears  his 
chain  of  office,  but  as  she  sat  at  the  head  of 
her  table  in  one  of  the  big  mansions  of  New 
York  I  saw  that  wealth  had  not  cumbered  the 
soul  of  this  masterful  lady,  whose  views  on 
life  are  as  direct  and  simple  as  those  of 
Abraham  Lincoln.  She  was  the  middle-class 
housewife  in  spite  of  the  footmen  who  stood 
in  fear  of  her. 

Essentially  middle-class  in  the  best  sense 
of  the  word  were  the  crowds  I  met  in  the 
hotels.  The  men  were  making  money — lots 
of  it — by  hard  work.  They  had  taken  a  few 
days  off,  or  left  business  early,  to  meet  their 
soldier-sons  in  these  gilded  halls  where  they 
had  a  sense  of  satisfaction  in  spending  large 
numbers  of  dollars  in  a  short  time. 

"This  is  my  boy  from  'over  there'!  Just 
come  back." 

I  heard  that  introduction  many  times,  and 
saw  the  look  of  pride  behind  the  glasses  that 
were  worn  by  a  gray-eyed  man,  who  had  his 
hand  on  the  arm  of  an  upstanding  fellow  in 

9 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

field  uniform,  tall  and  lean  and  hard.  "It's 
good  to  be  back,"  said  one  of  these  young 
officers,  and  as  he  sat  at  table  he  looked  round 
the  huge  salon  with  its  cut-glass  candelabra, 
where  scores  of  little  dinner-parties  were  in 
progress  to  the  strident  music  of  a  stringed 
band,  and  then,  with  a  queer  little  smile 
about  his  lips,  as  though  thinking  of  the 
contrast  between  this  scene  and  "over  there," 
said,  "Darned  good!"  In  their  evening 
frocks  the  women  were  elegant — they  know 
how  to  dress  at  night — and  now  and  then  the 
fresh,  frank  beauty  of  one  of  these  American 
girls  startled  my  eyes  by  its  witchery  of 
youth  and  health.  Some  of  them  are  decol- 
lete to  the  ultimate  limit  of  a  milliner's  au- 
dacity, and  foolishly  I  suffered  from  a  sense 
of  confusion  sometimes  because  of  the  phys- 
ical revelations  of  elderly  ladies  whose  virtue, 
I  am  sure,  is  as  that  of  Caesar's  wife.  The 
frail  queens  of  beauty  in  the  lotus-garden  of 
life's  enchanted  places  would  envy  some 
of  the  frocks  that  come  out  of  Fifth  Avenue, 
and  scream  with  horror  at  their  prices. 
But  although  the  American  woman  with  a 
wealthy  husband  likes  to  put  on  the  flimsy 
robes  of  Circe,  it  is  only  as  she  would  go  to 

a  fancy-dress  ball  in  a  frock  that  would  make 

10 


THE  ADVENTURE  OF  LIFE  IN  NEW  YORK 

her  brother  say:  "Gee!  .  .  .  And  where  did 
you  get  that  bit  of  fluff?"  She  is  Circe, 
with  the  Suffrage,  and  high  ideals  of  life,  and 
strong  views  on  the  League  of  Nations.  She 
makes  up  her  face  like  a  French  comedienne, 
but  she  has,  nine  times  out  of  ten,  the  kind 
heart  of  a  parson's  wife  in  rural  England  and 
a  frank,  good-natured  wit  which  faces  the 
realities  of  life  with  the  candor  of  a  clean 
mind. 

'  I  found  "gay  life"  in  New  York  immensely 
and  soberly  respectable.  One  could  take 
one's  maiden  aunt  into  the  heart  of  it  and 
not  get  hot  by  her  blushes.  In  fact,  it  is  the 
American  maiden  aunt  who  sets  the  pace  of 
the  fox-trot  and  the  one-step  in  dancing- 
rooms  where  there  are  music  and  afternoon 
tea.  Several  times  I  supped  "English  break- 
fast tea" — I  suspect  Sir  Thomas  Lip  ton  had 
something  to  do  with  it — at  five  o'clock  on 
bright  afternoons,  watching  the  scene  at 
Sherry's  and  Delmonico's.  It  seemed  to  me 
that  this  dancing  habit  was  a  most  curious 
and  over-rated  form  of  social  pleasure.  It 
was  as  though  American  society  had  said, 
"Let  us  be  devilishly  gay!"  but  started  too 
early  in  the  day,  with  desperate  sobriety. 
Many  couples  left  the  tea-table  for  the  pol- 

11 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

ished  boards  and  joined  the  throng  which 
surged  and  eddied  in  circles  of  narrow  circum- 
ference, jostled  by  other  dancers.  Youth 
did  not  have  it  all  its  own  way.  On  the 
contrary,  I  noticed  that  bald-headed  gentle- 
men with  some  width  of  waistbands  were  in 
the  majority,  dancing  with  pridigious  gravity 
and  the  maiden  aunts.  They  were  mostly 
visitors,  I  am  told,  from  other  cities — Bosto- 
nians  escaping  from  the  restrictions  of  their 
Early  Victorian  atmosphere,  senators  who 
voted  for  prohibition  in  their  own  states, 
business  men  who  had  booked  reservations 
on  midnight  trains  from  Grand  Central 
Terminal.  Here  and  there  young  officers  of 
the  army  and  navy  led  out  pretty  girls,  and 
with  linked  arms,  and  faces  very  close  to- 
gether, danced  in  a  kind  of  coma,  which  they 
seemed  to  enjoy,  though  without  any  sparkle 
in  their  eyes.  There  were  also  officers  of 
other  nations — a  young  Frenchman  appealing 
to  the  great  heart  of  the  American  people  on 
behalf  of  devastated  France,  and  dancing 
for  the  sake  of  people  scorched  by  the  horrors 
of  war,  to  say  nothing  of  the  little  American 
girl  whose  yellow  fringe  was  on  his  Croix  de 
Guerre;  and  young  English  officers  belong- 
ing to    the    British    Mission,  and    engaged 

12 


THE  ADVENTURE  OF  LIFE  IN  NEW  YORK 

in  propaganda  —  oh,  frightful  word!  —  of 
which  a  the  dansant  at  Dehnonico's  was,  no 
doubt,  a  serious  part  of  duty.  One  figure* 
that  caught  my  eye  gave  the  keynote  to  the 
moral  and  spiritual  character  of  the  scene. 
It  was  the  figure  of  a  stout  old  lady  wearing 
a  hat  with  a  huge  feather  which  waggled  over 
her  nose  as  she  danced  the  one-step  with 
earnest  vivacity,  and  an  old  gentleman  with 
side-whiskers.  She  panted  as  she  came  back 
to  the  tea-table,  and  said,  "Say,  that  makes 
me  feel  young!"  It  occurred  to  me  that  she 
might  be  Mrs.  Wiggs  of  the  Cabbage  Patch 
on  a  visit  to  New  York,  and  anyhow  her 
presence  assured  me  that  afternoon  dancing 
at  Delmonico's  need  not  form  the  theme  of 
any  moralist  in  search  of  vice  in  high  places. 
It  is  not  only  respectable,  it  is  domestic. 
Savonarola  himself  would  not  have  de- 
nounced such  innocent  amusement.  Nor 
did  I  find  anything  to  shock  the  sensibilities 
of  high-souled  ethics  in  such  midnight  haunts 
as  the  Ziegfeld  Follies  or  the  Winter  Garden, 
except  the  inanity  of  all  such  shows  where 
large  numbers  of  pretty  girls  and  others 
disport  themselves  in  flowing  draperies  and 
colored  lights  before  groups  of  tired  people 
who   can  hardly  hide  their   boredom,   but 

13 


Ooj-c. 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

yawn  laughingly  over  their  cocktails  and  say, 
"Isn't  she  wonderful?"  when  Mollie  King 
sings  a  song  about  a  variety  of  smiles,  and 
discuss  the  personality  of  President  Wilson 
between  comic  turns  of  the  Dooley  brothers. 
That  at  least  is  what  happened  in  my  little 
group  on  the  roof  of  the  Century  Theater, 
where  a  manufacturer  of  barbed  wire — I 
wonder  if  they  were  his  barbs  on  which  I  tore 
myself  in  Flanders  fields — initiated  me  into 
the  mystery  of  a  Bacardi  cocktail  followed  by 
a  stinger,  from  which  I  was  rescued,  in  the 
nick  of  time,  by  a  kind  lady  on  my  right  who 
took  pity  on  my  innocence.  A  famous  play- 
wright opposite,  as  sober  as  a  judge,  as 
courteous  as  Beau  Brummell,  passed  the 
time  of  day,  which  was  a  wee  small  hour  of 
morning,  with  little  ladies  who  came  into  the 
limelight,  until  suddenly  he  said,  with  a  sigh 
of  infinite  impatience,  "Haven't  we  enjoyed 
ourselves  enough?  I  want  my  bed";  so 
interrupting  a  serious  discussion  between  a 
war  correspondent  and  a  cartoonist  on  the 
exact  truth  about  German  atrocities,  to  the 
monstrous  melody  of  a  jazz  band.  Human 
nature  is  the  same  in  New  York  as  in  other 
cities  of  the  world.  Passion,  weakness,  folly, 
are  not  eliminated  from   the  relations  be- 

14 


THE  ADVENTURE  OF  LIFE  IN  NEW  YORK 

tween  American  men  and  women.  But  to 
find  vice  and  decadence  in  American  society 
one  has  to  go  in  search  of  it;  and  I  did  not 
go.  I  found  -New  York  society  tolerant  in 
its  views,  frank  in  its  expression  of  opinion, 
fondjof^laughter,  and  wonderfully  sincere. 
Wealth  does  not  spoil  its  fresh  and  healthy 
outlook  on  life,  and  its  people  are  idealists  at 
heart,  with  a  reverence  for  the  old-fashioned 
virtues  and  an  admiration  for  those  who 
"make  good"  in  whatever  job  to  which  they 
put  their  hands. 

After  all,  hotel  life,  and  restaurant  life, 
and  the  glamorous  world  of  the  Great  White 
Way,  do  not  reveal  the  real  soul  of  New 
York.  They  are  no  more  a  revelation  of 
normal  existence  than  boulevard  life  in 
Paris  represents  the  daily  round  of  the  aver- 
age Parisian.  They  are  the  happy  hunting- 
grounds  of  the  transient,  and  the  real  New- 
Yorker  only  visits  them  in  hours  of  leisure 
and  boredom. 

Another  side  of  the  adventure  of  life  in 
New  York  is  "downtown,"  where  the  sub- 
ways and  the  overhead  railways  pour  out 
tides  of  humanity  who  do  not  earn  their 
dollars  without  hard  work  and  long  hours  of 
it.     I  should  never  have  found  my  way  to 

15 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

Bowling  Green  and  Wall  Street  without  a 
guide,  because  the  underground  world  of  the 
subways,  where  electric  trains  go  rushing 
like  shuttles  through  the  warp  and  woof  of  a 
monstrous  network,  is  utterly  confusing  to  a 
stranger.  But  with  the  guide,  who  led  me 
by  the  hand  and  laughed  at  my  childlike 
bewilderment,  I  came  into  the  heart  of  New 
York  business  life  and  saw  its  types  in  their 
natural  environment.  It  is  an  alarming 
world  to  the  wanderer  who  comes  there  sud- 
denly. I  confess  that  when  I  first  walked 
through  those  deep  gorges,  between  the 
mighty  walls  of  houses  as  high  as  mountains 
in  a  surge  of  humanity  in  a  hurry,  I  felt  dazed 
and  cowardly.  I  had  a  conviction  that  my 
nerve-power  would  never  survive  the  stress 
and  strain  of  such  a  life  in  such  a  place.  I 
nearly  dislocated  my  neck  by  gazing  up  at 
the  heights  of  the  skyscrapers,  rising  story 
on  story  to  fifty  or  sixty  floors.  In  a  House 
of  a  Thousand  Windows  I  took  the  elevator 
to  the  top  story  and  wished  I  hadn't  when 
the  girl  in  charge  of  the  lift  asked,  "What 
floor?"  and  was  answered  by  a  quiet  gentle- 
man who  said,  "Thirty-one."  That  was 
our  first  stop,  and  in  the  few  seconds  we 
took  to  reach  this  altitude  I  had  a  vision  of 

16 


THE  ADVENTURE  OF  LIFE  IN  NEW  YORK 

this  vast  human  ant-heap,  with  scores  of 
offices  on  each  floor,  and  typewriters  clicking 
in  all  of  them,  and  girl-clerks  taking  down 
letters  from  hard-faced  young  men  juggling 
with  figures  which,  by  the  rise  or  drop  of  a 
decimal  point,  mean  the  difference  between 
millions  of  dollars  in  the  markets  of  the 
world.  Each  man  and  woman  there  in  this 
House  of  a  Thousand  Windows  had  a  human 
soul,  with  its  own  little  drama  of  life,  its 
loves  and  hopes  and  illusions,  but  in  the 
vastness  of  one  skyscraper,  in  the  whirlpool 
of  commerce,  in  the  machinery  of  money- 
making,  the  humanities  of  life  seemed  to  be 
destroyed  and  these  people  to  be  no  more 
than  slaves  of  modern  civilization,  ruthless  of 
their  individual  happiness.  What  could  they 
know  of  art,  beauty,  leisure,  the  quiet  pools 
of  thought?  .  .  .  Out  in  Wall  Street  there 
was  pandemonium.  The  outside  brokers — 
the  curb  men — were  bidding  against  one 
another  for  stocks  not  quoted  on  the  New 
York  Exchange — the  Standard  Oil  Com- 
pany among  them — and  their  hoarse  cries 
mingled  in  a  raucous  chorus.  I  stood  out- 
side a  madhouse  staring  at  lunatics.  Surely 
it  was  a  madhouse,  surrounded  by  other 
homes  for  incurably  insane!     This  particular 

17 


PEOPLE  OP  DESTINY 

house  was  a  narrow,  not  very  tall,  building 
of  reddish  brown  brick,  like  a  Georgian  house 
in  London,  and  out  of  each  window,  which 
was  barred,  poked  two  rows  of  faces,  one 
above  the  other,  as  though  the  room  inside 
were  divided  by  a  false  floor.  In  the  small 
window-frames  sat  single  figures,  in  crouched 
positions,  with  telephone  receivers  on  their 
ears  and  their  faces  staring  at  the  crowd  in 
the  street  below.  Each  one  of  those  human 
faces,  belonging  to  young  men  of  healthy 
appearance,  was  making  most  hideous  gri- 
maces, and  each  grimace  was  accompanied 
by  strange,  incomprehensible  gestures  of  the 
man's  fingers.  With  a  thumb  and  two  fin- 
gers, or  a  thumb  and  three  fingers,  they  poked 
through  the  windows  with  violent  efforts  to 
attract  the  notice  of  individuals  in  the  street. 
I  saw,  indeed,  that  all  this  fingering  had  some 
hidden  meaning  and  that  the  maniacs  as  I 
had  first  taken  them  to  be  were  signaling 
messages  to  the  curb  brokers,  who  wore  caps 
of  different  colors  in  order  to  be  distinguished 
from  their  fellows.  Up  and  down  the  street, 
and  from  the  topmost  as  well  as  from  the 
lower  stories  of  many  buildings,  I  saw  the 
grimaces  and  the  gestures  of  the  window- 
men,  and  the  noise  and  tumult  in  the  street 

18 


THE  ADVENTURE  OF  LIFE  IN  NEW  YORK 

became  more  furious.  It  was  a  lively  day  in 
Wall  Street,  and  I  thanked  God  that  my 
fate  had  not  led  me  into  such  a  life.  It 
seemed  worse  than  war.  .  .  . 

Not  really  so,  after  all.  It  was  only  the 
outward  appearance  of  things  that  distressed 
one's  soul.  Looking  closer,  I  saw  that  all 
these  young  men  on  the  curb  seemed  very 
cheery  fellows,  and  were  enjoying  themselves 
as  much  as  boys  in  a  Rugby  "scrum." 
There  was  nothing  wrong  with  their  nerves. 
There  was  nothing  wrong  with  a  crowd  of 
young  business  men  and  women  with  whom 
I  sat  down  to  luncheon  in  a  restaurant  called 
Robin's,  not  far  from  the  Stock  Exchange. 
These  were  the  working-bees  of  the  great 
hive  which  is  New  York.  They  were  in  the 
front-line  trenches  of  the  struggle  for  ex- 
istence, and  they  seemed  as  cheerful  as  our 
fighting-men  who  were  always  less  gloomy 
than  the  fellows  at  the  rear  in  the  safe 
back-waters  of  war.  Business  men  and  lady- 
clerks,  typists,  and  secretaries,  were  all 
mingled  at  the  little  tables  where  the  backs 
of  chairs  touched,  and  there  was  a  loud,  in- 
cessant chatter  like  the  noise  of  a  parrot- 
house.  I  overheard  some  fragments  of  con- 
versation at  the  tables  close  to  me. 

19 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

"They  don't  seem  to  be  getting  on  with 
the  Peace  Conference,"  said  a  young  man 
with  large  spectacles.  "  All  the  little  nations 
are  trying  to  grab  a  bit  of  their  neighbors' 
ground." 

"I  saw  the  cutest  little  hat — "  said  a  girl 
whose  third  ringer  was  stained  with  red  ink. 

"Have  you  seen  that  play  by  Maeter- 
linck?" asked  an  elderly  man  so  like  Presi- 
dent Wilson's  portraits  that  he  seemed  to  be 
the  twin  brother  of  that  much-discussed 
man. 

These  people  were  human  all  through,  not 
at  all  dehumanized,  after  all,  because  they 
lived  maybe  on  the  thirty-first  story  of  a 
New  York  skyscraper.  I  dare  say  also  that 
their  work  is  not  so  strenuous  as  it  looks 
from  the  outside,  and  that  they  earn  more 
dollars  a  week  than  business  men  and  women 
of  their  own  class  in  England,  so  that  they 
have  more  margin  for  the  pleasures  of  life, 
for  the  purchase  of  a  "cute  little  hat,"  even 
for  a  play  by  Maeterlinck. 

After  business  hours  many  of  these  people 
hurry  away  from  New  York  to  suburbs, 
where  they  get  quickly  beyond  the  turmoil 
of  the  city  in  places  with  bustling  little  high 
streets  of  their  own  and  good  shops  and,  on 

20 


THE  ADVENTURE  OF  LIFE  IN  NEW  YORK 

the  outskirts,  neat  little  houses  of  wooden 
framework,  in  gardens  where  flowers  grow 
between  great  rocks  which  crop  out  of  the 
soil  along  the  Connecticut  shore.  They  are 
the  "commuters,"  or,  as  we  should  say  in 
England,  the  season-ticket-holders,  and,  as  I 
did  some  "commuting"  myself  during  a  ten 
weeks'  visit  to  America,  I  used  to  see  them 
make  a  dash  for  their  trains  between  five  and 
six  in  the  afternoon  or  late  at  night  after 
theater-going  in  New  York.  I  never  tired 
of  the  sight  of  those  crowds  in  the  great  hall 
of  the  Grand  Central  Terminal  or  in  the 
Pennsylvania  Station,  and  saw  the  very 
spirit  of  the  United  States  in  those  vast 
buildings  which  typify  modern  progress.  In 
England  a  railway  station  is,  as  a  rule,  the 
ugliest,  most  squalid  place  in  any  great  city; 
but  in  America  it  is,  even  in  provincial  towns, 
a  great  adventure  in  architecture,  where  the 
mind  is  uplifted  by  nobility  of  design  and 
imagination  is  inspired  by  spaciousness,  light, 
color,  and  silence.  It  is  strangely,  uncan- 
nily quiet  in  the  central  hall  of  the  Pennsyl- 
vania Station,  as  one  comes  down  a  long 
broad  flight  of  steps  to  the  vast  floor  space 
below   a   high   dome — painted   blue   like   a 

summer  sky,  with  golden  stars  atwinkling — 

21 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

uplifted  on  enormous  arches.  It  is  like 
entering  a  great  cathedral,  and,  though  hun- 
dreds of  people  are  scurrying  about,  there  is  a 
hush  through  the  hall  because  of  its  immense 
height,  in  which  all  sound  is  lost,  and  there  is 
no  noise  of  footsteps  and  only  a  low  murmur 
of  voices.  So  it  is  also  in  the  Grand  Central 
Terminal,  where  I  found  myself  many  times 
before  the  last  train  left.  There  is  no  sign 
of  railway  lines  or  engines,  or  the  squalor  of 
sidings  and  sheds.  All  that  is  hidden  away 
until  one  is  admitted  to  the  tracks  before  the 
trains  start.  Instead,  there  are  fruit-stalls 
and  flower-stalls  bright  with  color,  and  book- 
stalls piled  high  with  current  literature  from 
which  every  mind  can  take  its  choice,  and 
candy-stalls  where  the  aching  jaw  may  find 
its  chewing-gum,  and  link  up  meditation 
with  mastication,  on  the  way  to  New  Ro- 
chelle — "forty -five  minutes  from  Broadway" 
— or  to  the  ruralities  of  Rye,  Mamaroneck, 
and  Port  Chester,  this  side  of  high  life  in 
Greenwich,  Connecticut. 

Some  of  the  male  commuters  have  a  habit 
of  playing  cards  between  New  York  and  New 
Rochelle,  showing  an  activity  of  mind  not 
dulled  by  their  day's  work  in  town.  But 
others   indulge    in    conversational    quartets, 

22 


THE  ADVENTURE  OF  LIFE  IN  NEW  YORK 

and  on  these  journeys  I  heard  more  than  I 
wanted  to  know  about  the  private  life  of 
President  Wilson,  and  things  I  wanted  to 
learn  about  the  experiences  of  American  sol- 
diers in  France,  the  state  of  feeling  between 
America  and  England,  and  the  philosophy  of 
success  by  men  who  had  succeeded.  It  was 
a  philosophy  of  simple  virtue  enforced  by 
will-power  and  a  fighting  spirit.  "Don't  hit 
often,"  said  one  of  these  philosophers,  who 
began  life  as  an  errand-boy  and  now  designs 
the  neckwear  of  society,  "but,  when  you  do, 
hit  hard  and  clean.  No  man  is  worth  his 
salt  unless  he  loses  his  temper  at  the  right 
time." 

In  the  last  train  to  Greenwich  were  Ameri- 
can soldiers  and  mariners  just  back  from 
France,  who  slept  in  corners  of  the  smoking- 
coach  and  wakened  with  a  start  at  New  Ro- 
chelle,  with  a  dazed  look  in  their  eyes,  as 
though  wondering  whether  they  had  merely 
dreamed  of  being  home  again  and  were  still 
in  the  glades  of  the  Argonne  forest.  .  .  .  The 
powder  was  patchy  on  the  nose  of  a  tired 
lady  whose  head  drooped  on  the  shoulder  of  a 
man  in  evening  clothes  chewing  an  unlighted 
cigar  and  thinking,  with  a  little  smile  about 
his  lips,  of  something  that  had  happened  in 

3  23 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

the  evening.  Two  typist-girls  with  their 
mothers  had  been  to  a  lecture  by  Captain 
Carpenter,  V.C.,  one  of  the  heroes  of  Zee- 
brugge.  They  were  "crazy'9  about  him. 
They  loved  his  description  of  the  "blunt 
end"  and  the  "pointed  end"  of  the  ship. 
They  had  absorbed  a  lot  of  knowledge  about 
naval  tactics;  and  they  were  going  to  buy 
his  photograph  to  put  over  their  desks.  .  .  . 
Part  of  the  adventure  of  life  in  New  York 
is  the  acquisition  of  unexpected  knowledge 
by  means  of  lectures;  and  Carnegie  Hall  is 
the  Mecca  of  lecturers.  Having  been  one  of 
the  lecturers,  I  can  speak  from  personal  ex- 
perience when  I  say  that  a  man  who  stands 
for  the  first  time  on  the  naked  desert  of  that 
platform,  looking  toward  rows  of  white  faces 
and  white  shirt-fronts  to  the  farthest  limit  of 
the  topmost  galleries,  feels  humility  creep 
into  his  soul  until  he  shrinks  to  the  size  of 
Hop-q'-My-Thumb  and  is  the  smallest,  lone- 
liest thing  in  the  whole  wide  world.  A  mi- 
crobe is  a  monster  to  him,  and  he  quakes  with 
terror  when  he  hears  the  first  squeak  of  his 
tiny  voice  in  the  vast  spaciousness  under 
that  high,  vaulted  roof.  On  that  first  night 
of  mine  I  would  have  sold  myself,  with  white 
shirt,   cuff-links,   and   quaking  body,  for  a 

24 


THE  ADVENTURE  OF  LIFE  IN  NEW  YORK 

two-cent  piece,  if  any  one  had  been  fool 
enough  to  buy  me  and  let  me  off  that  awful 
ordeal.  And  yet,  looking  back  on  it  now,  I 
know  that  it  wTas  the  finest  hour  of  my  life, 
and  a  wonderful  reward  for  small  service, 
when  all  those  people  rose  to  greet  me,  and 
there  came  up  to  me  out  of  that  audience  a 
spiritual  friendship  so  warm  and  generous 
that  I  felt  it  like  the  touch  of  kindly  hands 
about  me,  and  recovered  from  my  fright. 
Afterward,  as  always  happens  in  America, 
there  was  a  procession  of  people  who  came 
onto  the  platform  to  shake  hands  and  say 
words  of  thanks,  so  that  one  gets  into  actual 
touch  with  all  kinds  of  people  and  their 
friendship  becomes  personal.  In  that  way 
I  made  thousands  of  friends  in  America  and 
feel  toward  them  all  a  lasting  gratitude  be- 
cause of  the  generous,  warm-hearted,  splen- 
did things  they  said  as  they  passed  with  a 
quick  hand-clasp.  The  lecture  habit  in 
America  is  deep-rooted  and  widespread. 
Every  small  town  has  its  lecture-hall,  and  is 
in  competition  with  every  other  town  near 
by  for  lecturers  who  have  some  special  fame 
or  knowledge.  In  New  York  there  is  an 
endless  series  of  lectures,  not  only  in  places 
like  Carnegie  Hall  and  iEolian  Hall,  but  in 

85 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

clubs  and  churches.  Great  audiences,  made 
up  of  rich  society  people  as  well  as  the 
"intellectuals"  and  the  professional  classes, 
gather  in  force  to  hear  any  man  whose  per- 
sonality makes  him  interesting  or  who  has 
something  to  say  which  they  want  to  hear. 
In  many  cases  personality  is  sufficient. 
People  of  New  York  will  cheerfully  pay  five 
dollars  to  see  a  famous  man,  and  not  think 
their  money  wasted  if  his  words  are  lost  in 
empty  space,  or  if  they  know  already  as 
much  as  he  can  tell  them  about  the  subject 
of  his  speech.  Marshal  Joffre  had  no  need 
to  prepare  orations.  When  he  said,  "Mes- 
sieurs et  mesdames"  they  cheered  him  for  ten 
minutes,  and  when,  after  that,  he  said,  "je 
suis  enchante"  they  cheered  him  for  ten 
minutes  more.  They  like  to  see  the  men 
who  have  done  things,  the  men  who  count 
for  something,  and  to  study  the  personality 
of  a  man  about  whom  they  have  read.  If  he 
has  something  to  tell  them,  so  much  the 
better,  and  if  he  is  not  renowned  he  must  tell 
them  something  pretty  good  if  he  wants 
their  money  and  their  patience.  I  have  no 
doubt  that  the  habit  of  lecture-going  is  one 
of  the  greatest  influences  at  work  in  the  edu- 
cation of  the  American  people.     The  knowl- 

26 


THE  ADVENTURE  OF  LIFE  IN  NEW  YORK 

edge  they  acquire  in  this  way  does  not  bite 
very  deep,  and  it  leaves,  I  fancy,  only  a 
superficial  impression,  but  it  awakens  their 
intelligence  and  imagination,  directs  their 
thoughts  to  some  of  the  big  problems  of 
life,  and  is  a  better  way  of  spending  an 
evening  than  idle  gossip  or  a  variety  enter- 
tainment. The  League  for  Political  Educa- 
tion which  I  had  the  honor  of  addressing  in 
Carnegie  Hall  has  a  series  of  lectures — three 
times  a  week,  I  think — which  are  attended 
by  people  engaged  in  every  kind  of  educative 
and  social  work  in  New  York,  and  at  a 
luncheon  afterward  I  listened  to  a  number  of 
speeches  by  public  men  and  women  more  in- 
spiring in  their  sincerity  of  idealism  than 
anything  I  have  heard  in  similar  assemblies. 
All  these  people  were  engaged  in  practical 
work  for  the  welfare  of  their  fejloj^creatures, 
as  pioneers  of  progress  in  the  adventure  of 
life  in  New  York,  and  the  women  especially, 
like  Jane  Addams,  impressed  me  by  the  real 
beauty  of  their  personality. 

Another  phase  of  life  which  interested  me 
was  the  club  world  of  the  city,  and  in  these 
clubs  I  met  most  of  the  men  and  many  of  the 
women  who  count  in  the  intellectual  activity 
of  New  York.     I  came  in  touch  there  with 

27 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

every  stratum  of  thought  and  tradition 
which  makes  up  the  structure  of  American 
politics  and  ideas.  I  met  the  conservatives 
of  the  Union  Club  who  live  in  an  atmosphere 
of  dignified  austerity  (reminding  me  of  the 
Athenaeum  Club  in  London,  where  the  very 
waiters  have  the  air  of  bishops  and  the  po- 
litical philosophy  of  the  late  Lord  Salisbury), 
and  who  confided  to  me  with  quiet  gravity 
their  personal  and  unprintable  opinions  of 
Mr.  Wilson;  I  became  an  honorary  member 
of  the  Union  League  Club,  hardly  less  con- 
servative in  its  traditional  outlook  and  having 
a  membership  which  includes  many  leading 
business  and  professional  men  of  New  York 
City.  It  was  here  that  I  saw  a  touching 
ceremony  which  is  one  of  my  best  memories 
of  the  United  States,  when  the  negro  troops 
of  a  fighting  regiment  marched  up  Fifth 
Avenue  in  a  snow-storm,  and  gave  back  their 
colors  for  safe-keeping  to  the  Union  League 
Club,  which  had  presented  them  when  they 
went  to  war.  Ex-Governor  Hughes,  speak- 
ing from  the  balcony,  praised  them  for  their 
valor  in  the  great  conflict  for  the  world's 
liberty,  when  they  fought  for  the  country 
which  had  given  them  their  own  freedom  by 
no  light  sacrifice  of  blood.     By  their  service 

28 


THE  ADVENTURE  OF  LIFE  IN  NEW  YORK 

in  France  they  had  gained  a  glory  for  their 
citizenship  in  the  United  States  and  stood 
equal  with  their  white  comrades  in  the  grati- 
tude of  the  American  people.  There  were 
tears  in  the  eyes  of  colored  officers  when, 
after  a  luncheon  in  the  Union  League  Club, 
they  heard  other  words  like  those,  giving 
honor  to  the  spirit  of  their  race.  .  .  .  Up  the 
wide  stairway  of  the  club,  in  the  softly 
glowing  light  which  comes  through  a  stained- 
glass  window,  the  colors  of  the  darky  regi- 
ment hang  as  a  memorial  of  courage  and 
sacrifice.  .  .  . 

I  was  the  guest  of  the  Arts  Club  amid  a 
crowd  of  painters,  poets,  musicians,  and 
writing-men,  who  sat  at  long  tables  in  pan- 
eled rooms  decorated  with  pictures  and  cari- 
catures which  were  the  work  of  their  own 
members.  Clouds  of  tobacco  smoke  made 
wreaths  above  the  board.  A  soldier-poet 
rose  between  the  courses  and  sang  his  own 
songs  to  the  chorus  of  his  comrades.  It  was 
a  jolly  night  among  jolly  good  fellows,  who 
had  wit,  and  the  gift  of  laughter,  and  large 
hearts  which  beat  in  sympathy  for  those  who 
suffered  in  the  war.  ...  In  the  City  Club  I 
had  a  room  when  I  wanted  it,  and  the  hall 
porter  and  the  bell-boys,  and  the  elevator- 

29 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

man,  and  the  clerks  in  the  office,  shook  hands 
with  me  when  I  went  in  and  out,  so  that  I 
felt  at  home  there,  after  a  splendid  night 
when  crowds  of  ladies  joined  the  men  to 
listen  to  my  story  of  the  war,  and  when  a 
famous  glee-party  sang  songs  to  me  across 
rose  garlands  on  the  banquet  table.  The 
City  Club  has  a  number  of  habitues  who  play 
dominoes  on  quiet  nights,  and  in  deep  leather 
chairs  discuss  the  destiny  of  nations  as  men 
who  pull  the  wires  which  make  the  puppets 
dance.  It  is  the  home  of  the  foreign  cor- 
respondents in  New  York,  who  know  the 
inside  of  international  politics,  and  whose 
president  is  (or  was,  at  the  time  of  my  visit) 
a  kindly,  human,  English  soul  with  a  genius 
for  fellowship  which  has  made  a  little  League 
of  Nations  in  this  New  York  house.  I  met 
him  first,  as  a  comrade  of  the  pen,  in  the 
Street  of  Adventure,  where  London  jour- 
nalists rub  shoulders  on  their  way  to  history ; 
and  in  New  York  his  friendship  was  a  gener- 
ous and  helpful  gift,  and  by  his  good  words  I 
made  many  other  friends. 

It  seemed  to  me  that  New  York  is  a  city 
where  friendship  is  quickly  made,  and  I 
found  that  the  best  part  of  my  adventure  in 
the  city.     Day  after  day,  when  dusk  was 

30 


THE  ADVENTURE  OF  LIFE  IN  NEW  YORK 

creeping  into  the  streets  and  lights  began  to 
gleam  in  all  the  windows  of  the  houses  that 
reach  up  to  the  stars,  I  drove  down  the  long 
highway  of  Fifth  Avenue  with  a  certainty 
that  before  the  evening  was  out  I  should 
meet  a  number  of  friendly  souls  who  would 
make  me  welcome  at  their  tables  and  reveal 
their  convictions  and  ideals  with  a  candor 
which  does  not  come  to  English  people 
until  their  ice  of  reserve  is  broken  or  thawed. 
And  that  was  always  so.  At  a  small  dinner- 
party or  a  big  reception,  in  one  of  the  great 
mansions  of  New  York,  or  in  a  suite  of  rooms 
high  above  the  traffic  of  the  street,  conver- 
sation was  free-and-easy,  with  or  without  the 
aid  of  a  cocktail,  and  laughter  came  in  gusts, 
and  American  men  and  women  spoke  of  the  f 
realities  of  life  frankly  and  without  camou- 
flage, with  a  directness  and  sincerity  that 
touched  the  essential  truth  of  things.  In 
one  room  Melba  sang  with  eternal  girlhood 
in  her  voice,  while  painters  and  diplomats, 
novelists,  and  wits,  famous  actresses  and 
princesses  of  New  York,  were  hushed  into 
silence  for  a  while,  until,  when  the  spell  was 
broken,  there  rose  again  a  merry  tumult  of 
tongues.  In  another  room  a  group  of  "in- 
tellectuals," tired  of  talking  about  war  and 

31 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

peace,  played  charades  like  children  in  the 
nursery,  and  sat  down  to  drawing  games 
with  shouts  of  mirth  at  a  woman's  head  with 
the  body  of  a  fish  and  the  legs  of  a  bird.  In 
another  house  the  King's  Jester  of  New  York, 
who  goes  from  party  to  party  like  a  French 
wit — the  little  Abbe  Morellet — in  the  salons 
of  France  before  the  Revolution,  destroyed 
the  dignity  of  decorous  people  by  a  carica- 
ture of  German  opera  and  an  imitation  of  a 
German  husband  eating  in  a  public  restau- 
rant. I  knew  the  weakness  that  comes  from 
a  surfeit  of  laughter.  ...  I  did  not  tire  of 
these  social  adventures  in  New  York,  and  I 
came  to  see  something  of  the  spirit  of  the 
people  as  it  was  revealed  in  the  cosmopolitan 
city.  I  found  that  spirit  touched,  in  spite  of 
social  merriment,  by  the  tragedy  of  war,  and 
anxious  about  the  outcome  of  peace.  I  found 
these  people  conscious  of  new  responsibilities 
thrust  upon  them  by  fate,  and  groping  in 
their  minds  for  some  guidance,  for  some  clear 
light  upon  their  duty  and  destiny  in  the  re- 
shaping of  the  world  by  the  history  that  has 
happened.  Europe,  three  thousand  miles 
away,  is  still  a  mystery  to  them,  full  of  un- 
known forces  and  peoples  and  passions  w^hich 
they  cannot  understand,  though  they  read 


THE  ADVENTURE  OF  LIFE  IN  NEW  YORK 

all  their  Sunday  papers,  with  all  their  bulky 
supplements.     When   I   went   among   them 
they  were  divided  by  the  conflict  of  political 
differences  with  passionate  emotion,  and  torn 
between  conflicting  ideals  of  patriotism  and 
humanity.     But  most  of  them  put  on  one 
side,  with  a  fine  disdain,  all  meanness  of 
thought  and  action  and  the  dirty  squalor  of 
financial    interests.     Sure    of    their    power 
among  nations,  the  people  I  met — and  I  met 
many  of  the  best — were  anxious  to  rise  to 
their  high  chance  in  history  and  to  do  the 
Big  Thing  in  a  big  way,  when  they  saw  the 
straight  road  ahead. 
^     When  I  left  New  York  they  were  raising 
their  fifth  great  Victory  Loan,  and  the  streets 
were  draped  in  banners  bearing  the  great  V 
for  Victory  and  for  the  number  of  the  loan. 
Their  sense  of  drama  was  at  work  again  to 
make  this   enterprise  successful,   and  their 
genius  of  advertisement  wTas  in  action  to  put 
a   spell   upon   the   people.     The   face   of   a 
farmer  was  on  the  posters  in  many  streets, 
and  that  sturdy  old  fellow  upon  whose  indus- 
try the  wealth  of  America  depends  so  much, 
because  it  is  founded  in  the  soil,  put  his  hand 
in  his  pocket  and  said,  "Sure,  we'll  see  it 
through!"  ^ 

33  T 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

From  my  brief  visit  one  conviction  came 
to  me.  It  is  that  whatever  line  of  action  the 
American  people  take  in  the  new  world  that 
is  now  being  born  out  of  the  tumult  of  war, 
they  will  see  it  through,  by  any  sacrifice  and 
at  any  cost. 


II 

SOME   PEOPLE   I   MET   IN   AMERICA 

AS  a  professional  onlooker  of  life  (and  it  is 
l  a  poor  profession,  as  I  must  admit)  it 
has  always  been  my  habit  to  study  national 
and  social  types  in  any  country  where  I 
happen  to  be.  I  find  an  untiring  interest  in 
this,  and  prefer  to  sit  in  a  French  cafe,  for 
example,  watching  the  people  who  come  in 
and  out,  and  hearing  scraps  of  conversation 
that  pass  across  the  table,  to  the  most  thrill- 
ing theatrical  entertainment.  And  I  find 
more  interest  in  "common"  people  than  in 
the  uncommonly  distinguished,  by  fame  and 
power.  To  me  the  types  in  a  London  omni- 
bus or  a  suburban  train  are  more  absorbing 
as  a  study  than  a  group  of  generals  or  a 
party  of  statesmen,  and  I  like  to  discover  the 
lives  of  the  world's  nobodies,  their  way  of 
thought  and  their  outlook  on  the  world,  by 
the  character  in  their  faces  and  their  little 
social  habits.  In  that  way  one  gets  a  sense 
of  the  social  drama  of  a  country  and  of  the 

35 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

national  ideals  and  purpose.  So  when  I  went 
to  the  United  States  after  four  and  a  half 
years  in  the  war  zone,  where  I  had  been 
watching  another  kind  of  drama,  hideous 
and  horrible  in  spite  of  all  its  heroism,  I  fell 
into  my  old  habit  of  searching  for  types  and 
studying  characters.  I  had  unusual  oppor- 
tunity. New  York  and  many  other  cities 
opened  their  hearts  and  their  houses  to  me 
in  a  most  generous  way,  and  I  met  great 
numbers  of  people  of  every  class  and  kind. 
The  first  people  I  met,  before  I  had  stepped 
off  my  ship  of  adventure,  were  young  news- 
paper men  who  searched  the  ship  like  a  sieve 
for  any  passenger  who  had  something  in  his 
life  or  brain  worth  telling  to  the  world.  I 
was  scared  of  them,  having  heard  that  they 
could  extract  the  very  secrets  of  one's  soul 
by  examination  of  the  third  degree;  but  I 
found  them  human  and  friendly  fellows  who 
greeted  me  cheerily  and  did  not  take  up 
much  time  when  they  set  me  up  like  a  lay- 
figure  on  the  boat  deck,  turned  on  the 
"movie "-machine,  snap-shotted  me  from 
various  angles,  and  offered  me  American 
cigarettes  as  a  sign  of  comradeship.  I  met 
many  other  newspaper  men  and  women  in 
the  United  States;    those  who  control  the 

3a 


SOME  PEOPLE  I  MET  IN  AMERICA 

power  of  the  press — the  masters  of  the  ma- 
chine which  shapes  the  mind  of  peoples — 
and  those  who  feed  its  wheels  with  words. 
Because  I  had  some  history  to  tell,  the  word- 
writers  lay  in  wait  for  me,  found  my  tele- 
phone number  in  any  hotel  of  any  town 
before  I  knew  it  myself,  tapped  at  my  bed- 
room door  when  I  was  in  the  transition 
stage  between  day  and  evening  clothes,  and 
asked  questions  about  many  things  of  which 
I  knew  nothing  at  all,  so  that  I  had  to  camou- 
flage my  abysmal  depths  of  ignorance. 

They  know  their  job,  those  American  re- 
porters, and  I  was  impressed  especially  by 
the  young  women.  There  was  one  girl  who 
sat  squarely  in  front  of  me,  fixed  me  with 
candid  gray  eyes,  and  for  an  hour  put  me 
through  an  examination  about  my  sad  past 
until  I  had  revealed  everything.  'There  is 
nothing  that  girl  doesn't  know  about  me,  and 
I  should  blush  to  meet  her  again.  She  did 
not  take  a  single  note — by  that  I  knew  her 
as  a  good  journalist — and  wrote  two  columns 
of  revelation  with  most  deadly  accuracy  and 
a  beautiful  style.  Another  girl  followed  me 
round  a  picture-gallery  listening  to  casual 
remarks  among  a  group  of  friends,  and  wrote 
an   article   on   art-criticism   which   left  me 

37 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

breathless  with  admiration  at  her  wit  and 
knowledge,  of  which  I  took  the  credit.  One 
young  man,  once  a  Rhodes  scholar  at  Ox- 
ford, boarded  the  train  at  New  York,  bought 
me  a  drawing-room  for  private  conversa- 
tion, and  by  the  time  we  reached  Phila- 
delphia made  it  entirely  futile  for  me  to  give 
a  lecture,  because  he  had  it  all  in  his  memory, 
and  wrote  the  entire  history  of  everything  I 
had  seen  and  thought  through  years  of  war, 
in  next  day's  paper.  I  liked  a  young  Har- 
vard man  who  came  to  see  me  in  Boston. 
He  had  a  modesty  and  a  winning  manner 
which  made  me  rack  my  brains  to  tell  him 
something  good,  and  I  admired  his  type,  so 
clean  and  boyish  and  quick  in  intelligence. 
He  belonged  to  the  stuff  of  young  America, 
as  I  saw  it  in  the  fields  of  France,  eager  for 
service  whatever  the  risk.  I  met  the  edi- 
torial staffs  of  many  newspapers,  and  was 
given  a  luncheon  by  the  proprietor  and  edi- 
tors of  one  great  newspaper  in  New  York 
which  is  perhaps  the  biggest  power  in  the 
United  States  to-day.  All  the  men  round 
me  were  literary  types,  and  I  saw  in  their 
faces  the  imprint  of  hard  thought,  and  of 
hard  work  more  strenuous,  I  imagine,  than 
in  the  newspaper  life  of  any  other  country 

38 


SOME   PEOPLE  I  MET  IN  AMERICA 

of  the  world.  They  all  had  an  absorbing 
interest  in  the  international  situation  after 
the  armistice,  and  knew  a  good  deal  about 
the  secret  workings  of  European  policy.  A 
young  correspondent  just  back  from  Russia 
made  a  speech  summing  up  his  experiences 
and  conclusions,  which  were  of  a  startling 
kind,  told  with  the  utmost  simplicity  and 
bluntness.  The  proprietor  took  me  into  his 
private  room,  and  outlined  his  general  policy 
on  world  affairs,  of  which  the  first  item  on 
his  program  was  friendship  with  England.  .  .  . 
I  found  among  newspaper  men  a  sense  of 
responsibility  with  which  they  are  not  gener- 
ally credited,  and  wonderfully  alert  and  open 
minds;  also,  apart  from  their  own  party 
politics  and  prejudices,  a  desire  for  fair  play 
and  truth.  The  Yellow  Press  still  has  its 
power,  and  it  is  a  malign  influence  in  the 
United  States,  but  the  newspapers  of  good 
repute  are  conducted  by  men  of  principle 
•  and  conviction,  and  their  editorial  and 
literary  staffs  have  a  high  level  of  talent, 
representing  much,  I  think,  of  the  best  intel- 
ligence of  America. 

The  women  of  America  seem  to  me  to  have 
a  fair  share  of  that  intelligence,  and  I  met 
many  types  of  them  who  were  interesting  as 

4  39 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

social  studies.  Several  states  are  still  re- 
sisting woman  suffrage,  but  as  far  as  equality 
goes  in  all  affairs  of  daily  life  outside  political 
power  the  women  of  America  have  long 
claimed  and  gained  it.  During  the  war  they 
showed  in  every  class,  like  the  women  of  Eng- 
land, that  they  could  take  on  men's  jobs  and 
do  them  as  well  as  men  in  most  cases,  and 
better  than  men  in  some  cases.  They  drove 
motor-lorries  and  machines ;  they  were  dairy 
farmers  and  agriculturists;  they  became 
munition-workers,  carpenters,  clerks,  and 
elevator-girls,  and  the  womanhood  of  Amer- 
ica rallied  up  with  a  wonderful  and  devoted 
spirit  in  a  great  campaign  of  work  for  the 
Red  Cross  and  all  manner  of  comforts  for  the 
troops,  who,  by  a  lamentable  breakdown  in 
transport  organization,  never  received  many 
of  the  gifts  sent  to  them  by  women  old  and 
young  whose  eyes  and  fingers  ached  with  so 
much  stitching  during  the  long  evenings  of 
war.  Apart  altogether  from  war-work,  Amer- 
ican women  have  made  themselves  the  better 
halves  of  men,  and  the  men  know  it  and  are 
deferential  to  the  opinions  and  desires  of 
their  women-folk.  It  is  natural  that  women 
should  have  a  wider  knowledge  of  literature 
and  ideas  in  a  scheme  of  life  where  men  have 

40 


SOME  PEOPLE  I  MET  IN  AMERICA 

their  noses  down  to  the  grindstone  of  work 
for  long  hours  every  day.  That  is  what  most 
American  husbands  have  to  do  in  a  struggle 
for  existence  which  strives  up  to  the  posses- 
sion of  a  Ford  car,  generally  known  as  a 
"Tin  Lizzie"  or  a  "Flivver,"  on  the  way  to 
a  Cadillac  or  a  Packard,  a  country  cottage  on 
Long  Island  or  the  Connecticut  shore,  an 
occasional  visit  to  Tiffany's  in  Fifth  Avenue 
for  a  diamond  brooch,  or  some  other  trinket 
symbolizing  success,  a  holiday  at  Palm 
Beach,  week-ends  at  Atlantic  City,  and  a 
relief  from  boredom  after  office  hours  at  the 
Forty-fourth  Street  Theater  or  the  Winter 
Garden.  That  represents  the  social  ambi- 
tion of  the  average  business  man  on  the  road 
to  fortune,  and  it  costs  a  goodly  pile  of  dol- 
lars to  be  heaped  up  by  hard  work,  at  a  high 
strain  of  nervous  tension.  Meanwhile  the 
women  are  keeping  themselves  as  beautiful 
as  God  made  them,  with  slight  improvements 
according  to  their  own  ideas,  which  are  gen- 
erally wrong;  decorating  their  homes;  in- 
creasing their  housekeeping  expenses,  and 
reading  prodigiously.  They  read  a  vast 
number  of  books  and  magazines,  so  making 
it  possible  for  men  like  myself — slaves  of  the 
pen — to  exist  in  an  otherwise  cruel  world. 

41 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

Betore  the  American  lady  of  leisure  gets 
up  to  breakfast  (generally  she  doesn't)  and 
uses  her  lip-salve  and  powder-puff  for  the 
first  time  in  the  day,  she  has  her  counterpane 
spread  with  the  morning's  newspapers,  which 
are  folded  into  the  size  of  small  blankets. 
There  is  the  New  York  Times  for  respecta- 
bility, the  Tribune  for  political  "pep,"  and 
the  World  for  social  reform.  The  little  lady 
glances  first  of  all  at  the  picture  supplements 
while  she  sips  her  orange  juice,  reads  the 
head-lines  while  she  gets  on  with  the  rolled 
oats,  and  with  the  second  cup  of  coffee 
settles  down  to  the  solid  reading-matter  of 
international  sensations  (skipping,  as  a  rule, 
the  ends  of  columns  "continued  on  page  4"), 
until  it  is  time  to  interview  the  cook,  who 
again  gives  notice  to  leave  because  of  the 
conduct  of  the  chauffeur  or  the  catlike  quali- 
ties of  the  parlor-maid,  and  handles  the  tele- 
phone to  give  her  Orders  of  the  Day.  For 
some  little  time  after  that  the  telephone  is 
kept  busy  at  both  ends,  and,  with  a  cigarette 
threatening  to  burn  a  Buhl  cabinet,  the  lady 
of  leisure  talks  to  several  friends  in  New 
York,  answers  a  call  from  the  Western 
Union,  and  receives  a  night-letter  sent  over 
the  wire.     "No,  I  am  absolutely  engaged  on 

42 


.A\:J 


A   RELIEF   FROM   BOREDOM   AFTER    OFFICE   HOURS 


SOME  PEOPLE   I  MET   IN  AMERICA 

Monday,  dear.  Tuesday?  So  sorry  I  am 
fixed  up  that  day,  too.  Yes,  and  Thursday 
is  quite  out  of  the  question.  Friday?  Oh, 
hell,  make  it  Monday,  then!"  That  is  a 
well-worn  New  York  joke,  and  I  found  it 
funny  and  true  to  life,  because  it  is  as  diffi- 
cult to  avoid  invitations  in  New  York  as 
collisions  in  Fifth  Avenue.  There  is  a  little 
red  book  on  the  Buhl  cabinet  in  which  the 
American  lady  puts  down  her  engagements 
and  the  excuses  she  gave  for  breaking  others 
(it  is  useful  to  remember  those),  and  she  cal- 
culates that  as  far  as  the  present  day's 
work  is  planned  she  will  have  time  to  finish 
the  new  novel  by  John  Galsworthy,  to  get 
through  a  pamphlet  on  bolshevism  which  was 
mentioned  at  dinner  by  an  extremely  in- 
teresting young  man  just  back  from  Russia, 
to  buy  a  set  of  summer  furs  in  the  neighbor- 
hood of  Forty-second  Street  (Herbert,  poor 
dear!  says  they  are  utterly  unnecessary),  to 
lunch  at  the  Ritz-Carlton  with  a  party  of 
friends,  including  the  man  who  made  such  a 
sensation  with  his  lecture  on  France  at  the 
Carnegie  Hall  (she  will  get  a  lot  of  first-hand 
knowledge  about  the  French  situation),  and 
to  look  in  at  the  the  bavardage  with  dear 
Beatrice  de  H.,  where  some  of  the  company 

43 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

of  the  French  theater  will  meet  French- 
speaking  Americans  and  pretend  to  under- 
stand them.  Then  there  is  a  nice  free  eve- 
ning, for  once  (oh,  that  little  white  lie  in  the 
red  book!),  when  she  will  wallow  in  the 
latest  masterpiece  of  H.  G.  Wells  and  learn 
all  about  God  and  humanity  as  revealed  by 
that  extraordinary  genius  with  a  sense  of 
humor. 

So  the  American  lady  of  leisure  keeps  up- 
to-date  with  the  world's  lighter  thought  and 
skims  the  surface  of  the  deeper  knowledge, 
using  her  own  common  sense  as  an  acid  test 
of  truth  when  the  imagination  of  a  novelist 
runs  away  with  him,  and  widening  her  out- 
look on  the  problems  of  life  with  deliberate 
desire  to  understand.  It  makes  her  con- 
versation at  the  dinner-table  sparkling,  and 
the  men-folk  are  conscious  that  she  knows 
more  than  they  do  about  current  literature 
and  international  history.  She  has  her 
dates  right,  within  a  century  or  two,  in  any 
talk  about  medieval  England,  and  she  knows 
who  killed  Henri  IV  of  France,  who  were  the 
lovers  of  Marie  de  Medici,  why  Lloyd  George 
quarreled  with  Lord  Northcliffe,  and  what 
the  ambassador  said  to  the  leaders  of  Rus- 
sian bolshevism  when  he  met  them  secretly 

44 


SOME  PEOPLE  I  MET  IN  AMERICA 

in  Holland.  It  is  useful  to  know  those 
things  in  any  social  gathering  of  intellectu- 
als, and  I  met  several  ladies  of  American  so- 
ciety in  New  York  who  had  a  wide  range  of 
knowledge  of  that  kind. 

Many  American  ladies,  with  well-to-do 
husbands,  and  with  money  of  their  own, 
which  is  very  useful  to  them  in  time  of  need, 
do  not  regard  life  merely  as  a  game  out  of 
which  they  are  trying  to  get  the  most  fun,  but 
with  more  serious  views;  and  I  think  some 
of  those  find  it  hard  to  satisfy  their  aspira- 
tions, and  go  about  with  a  touch,  or  more,  of 
heartache  beneath  their  furs.  I  met  some 
women  who  spoke  with  a  certain  irony  which 
reflected  the  spent  light  of  old  illusions,  and 
others  who  had  a  kind  of  wistfulness  in  their 
eyes,  as  though  searching  for  the  unattain- 
able happiness.  The  Tired  Business  Man  as 
a  husband  has  his  limitations,  like  most 
men.  Often  his  long  hours  of  absence,  at  the 
office  and  his  dullness  at  home  make  his 
wife  rather  companionless,  and  her  novel- 
reading  habits  tend  to  emphasize  the  loss, 
and  force  upon  her  mind  the  desire  for  more 
satisfying  comradeship.  Generally  some  man 
who  enters  her  circle  seems  to  offer  the  chance 
of  this.     He  has  high  ideals,  or  the  pose  of 

45 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

them.  His  silences  seem  suggestive  of  deep 
unutterable  thoughts — though  he  may  be 
thinking  of  nothing  more  important  than  a 
smudge  on  his  white  waistcoat — he  has  a 
tenderness  in  his  gray  (or  black,  or  brown) 
eyes  which  is  rather  thrilling  to  a  woman 
chilled  by  the  lack-luster  look  of  the  man  who 
is  used  to  her  presence  and  takes  her  for 
granted.  .  .  .  The  Tired  Business  Man  ought 
to  be  careful,  lest  he  should  become  too  tired 
to  enter  into  the  interests  of  his  wife  and  to 
give  her  the  minimum  of  comradeship  which 
all  women  demand.  The  American  Woman 
of  Society,  outside  the  Catholic  Church, 
which  still  insists  upon  the  old  law,  seems  to 
me  quicker  than  most  others  to  cut  her  losses 
in  the  marriage  gamble,  if  she  finds,  or  thinks 
she  finds,  that  she  is  losing  too  heavily  for 
her  peace  of  heart.  Less  than  women  in 
European  countries  will  she  tolerate  deceit 
or  spiritual  cruelty,  and  the  law  offers  her  a 
way  of  escape,  expensive  but  certain,  from  a 
partnership  which  has  been  broken.  So- 
ciety, in  New  York  at  least,  is  tolerant  to 
women  who  have  dissolved  their  married 
partnership,  and  there  is  no  stoning-sister- 
hood  to  fling  mud  and  missiles  at  those  who 
have  already  paid  for  error  by  many  tears. 

46 


/ 


SOME  PEOPLE  I  MET  IN  AMERICA 

Yet  I  doubt  whether,  in  many  cases,  the 
liberty  they  find  makes  for  happiness.  There 
is  always  the  fear  of  a  second  mistake  worse 
than  the  first,  and,  anyhow,  some  unattached 
women  I  met,  women  who  could  afford  to 
live  alone,  not  without  a  certain  luxury  of 
independence,  seemed  disillusioned  as  to  the 
romance  of  life,  and  the  honesty  of  men,  and 
their  own  chance  of  happiness.  Their  furs 
and  their  diamonds  were  no  medicine  for  the 
bitterness  of  their  souls,  nor  for  the  hunger  in  — - 
their  hearts.  •/ 

But  I  found  a  great  class  of  women  in 
America  too  busy,  too  interested,  and  too 
inspired  by  common  sense  to  be  worried  by 
that  kind  of  emotional  distress — the  middle- 
class  women  who  flung  themselves  into  war- 
work,  as  before,  and  now,  in  time  of  peace, 
the  activities  of  charity  and  education  and 
domestic  life  have  called  to  them  for  service. 
There  was  a  woman  doctor  I  met  who  seemed 
to  me  as  fine  a  type  of  American  womanhood 
as  one  could  have  the  luck  to  meet,  and  yet, 
in  spite  of  uncommon  ability,  a  common  type 
in  her  cheery  and  practical  character.  When 
the  war  broke  out  her  husband,  who  was  a 
doctor  also,  was  called  to  serve  in  the  Ameri- 
can army,  and  his  wife,  who  had  passed  her 

47 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

medical  examinations  in  the  same  college 
with  him,  but  had  never  practised,  carried 
on  his  work,  in  spite  of  four  children.  They 
came  first  and  her  devotion  to  them  was  not 
altered,  but  that  did  not  prevent  her  from 
attending  to  a  growing  list  of  patients  at  a 
time  when  influenza  was  raging  in  her  dis- 
trict. She  went  about  in  a  car  which  she 
drove  herself,  with  the  courage  and  cheer- 
fulness of  a  gallant  soldier.  In  her  little 
battlefield  there  were  many  tragedies,  be- 
cause death  took  away  the  youngest-born  or 
the  eldest-born  from  many  American  homes, 
and  her  heart  was  often  heavy;  but  she  re- 
sisted all  gloomy  meditations  and  kept  her 
nerve  and  her  spirit  by — singing.  As  she 
drove  her  car  from  the  house  of  one  patient 
to  another  she  sang  loudly  to  herself,  over 
the  wheel,  any  little  old  song  that  came  into 
her  head — "  Hey-diddle-diddle,  the  cat  and 
the  fiddle,"  or  "Old  King  Cole  was  a  merry 
old  soul,  and  a  merry  old  soul  was  he," — to 
the  profound  astonishment  of  passers-by,  who 
shook  their  heads  and  said,  "It's  a  good  thing 
there's  going  to  be  Prohibition."  But  she 
saved  the  lives  of  many  women  and  children 
in  time  of  plague — for  the  influenza  reached 
the  height  of  plague — and  did  not  lose  her 

48 


SOME  PEOPLE  I  MET  IN  AMERICA 

sense  of  humor  or  her  fine,  hearty  laugh,  or 
her  graciousness  of  womanhood.  When  "the 
army,"  as  she  called  her  husband,  came 
back,  she  could  say,  "I  kept  your  flag  flying, 
old  man,  and  you'll  not  find  any  difference 
at  home."  I  saw  the  husband  and  wife  in 
their  home  together.  While  friends  were 
singing  round  the  piano,  these  two  held 
hands  like  young  lovers,  away  back  in  a 
shady  corner  of  the  room. 

I  met  another  husband  and  wife  who  in- 
terested me  as  types  of  American  life,  though 
not  in  their  home.  It  was  at  a  banquet  at- 
tended by  about  two  hundred  people.  The 
husband  was  the  chairman  of  the  party,  and 
he  had  a  wonderful  way  of  making  little 
speeches  in  which  he  called  upon  distin- 
guished people  to  talk  to  the  company, 
revealing  in  each  case  the  special  reason  why 
that  man  or  woman  should  have  a  hearing. 
He  did  this  with  wit  and  knowledge,  and  in 
each  case  indeed  it  was  a  privilege  to  hear 
the  speaker  who  followed,  because  all  the  men 
and  women  here  were  engaged  in  some  social 
work  of  importance  in  the  life  of  great  Ameri- 
can cities,  and  were  idealists  who  had  put 
their  theories  into  practice  by  personal  ser- 
vice and  self-sacrifice.     The  little  man  who 

49 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

was  the  chairman  paid  a  compliment  to  his 
own  wife,  and  I  found  she  was  sitting  by  my 
side.  She  had  gray  hair,  but  very  young, 
bright,  humorous  eyes,  and  an  almost  terrible 
truthfulness  of  speech.  I  was  startled  by 
some  things  she  said  about  the  war,  and  the 
psychology  of  men  and  women  under  the 
spell  of  war.  They  were  true,  but  dangerous 
to  speak  aloud  as  this  woman  spoke  them. 
Later,  she  talked  of  the  heritage  of  hatred" 
that  had  been  bequeathed  by  war  to  the 
people  of  the  world.  "Let  us  kill  hatred, 
she  said.  "It  is  the  survival  of  the  cave 
instinct  in  man  which  comes  out  of  its  hiding- 
places  under  the  name  of  patriotism  and 
justice."  I  do  not  know  what  link  there  was 
between  this  and  some  other  thought  which 
prompted  her  to  show  me  photographs  of 
two  big,  sturdy  boys  who,  she  told  me,  were 
her  adopted  children.  It  was  a  queer, 
touching  story,  about  these  children.  "I 
adopted  them  not  for  their  sake,  but  for 
mine,"  she  said.  She  was  a  lonely  woman, 
well  married,  wTith  leisure  and  money,  and 
the  temptation  of  selfishness.  It  was  to 
prevent  selfishness  creeping  into  her  heart 
that  she  sent  round  to  an  orphanage  for  two 
boy-babies.     They  were  provided,  and  she 

50 


SOME  PEOPLE   I  MET  IN  AMERICA 

brought  them  up  as  her  own,  and  found — so 
she  assured  me — that  they  grew  up  with  a 
marked  likeness  in  feature  to  herself  and  her 
sisters.  She  had  a  theory  about  that — the 
idea  that  by  some  kind  of  predestination 
souls  reach  through  space  to  one  another,  and 
find  the  home  where  love  is  waiting  for  them. 
I  was  skeptical  of  that,  having  known  the 
London  slums,  but  I  was  interested  in  the 
practical  experience  of  the  bright  little 
American  woman,  who  "selfishly,"  as  she 
said,  to  cure  selfishness,  had  given  two 
abandoned  babies  of  the  world  the  gift  of 
love,  and  a  great  chance  in  the  adventure  of 
life.  She  was  a  tremendous  protagonist  of 
environment  against  the  influence  of  hered- 
ity. "Environment  puts  it  over  heredity  all 
the  time,"  she  said. 

This  special  charity  on  her  part  is  not 
typical  of  American  women,  who  do  not, 
any  more  than  women  of  other  countries,  go 
about  adopting  other  people's  babies,  but  I 
think  that  her  frankness  of  speech  to  a 
stranger  like  myself,  and  her  curious  mixture 
of  idealism  and  practicality,  combined  with 
a  certain  shrewdness  of  humor,  are  qualities 
that  come  to  people  in  America.  She  her- 
self, indeed,  is  a  case  of  "environment,"  be- 

51 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

cause  she  is  foreign  in  blood,  and  American 
only  by  marriage. 

In  New  York  I  had  the  advantage  of 
meeting  one  lady  who  seemed  to  me  typical 
of  the  old-fashioned  "leaders"  of  American 
society  such  as  Henry  James  described  in  his 
novels.  She  lives  in  one  of  the  great  man- 
sions along  Fifth  Avenue,  and  the  very  ap- 
pearance of  her  butler  is  a  guaranty  of 
riches  and  respectability.  She  made  no 
disguise  of  her  wealth,  and  was  proud  of  it 
in  a  simple  way,  as  an  English  aristocrat  is 
proud  of  his  ancestry  and  family  treasures. 
But  she  acknowledges  its  responsibilities  and 
takes  them  seriously  with  a  sense  of  duty. 
She  had  received  lessons  in  public  speaking, 
in  order  to  hold  her  own  at  committee  meet- 
ings, and  she  doles  out  large  sums  in  charity 
to  public  institutions  and  deserving  cases, 
with  a  grim  determination  to  unmask  the 
professional  beggar  and  the  fraudulent  so- 
ciety. She  seemed  to  have  a  broad-hearted 
tolerance  for  the  younger  generation  and  a 
special  affection  for  boys  of  all  ages,  whom 
she  likes  to  feed  up,  and  to  keep  amused  by 
treating  them  to  the  circus  or  the  "movies"; 
but  I  fancy  that  she  is  a  stern  disciplinarian 
with  her  family  as  well  as  her  servants,  and 

52 


SOME  PEOPLE  I  MET  IN  AMERICA 

that  her  own  relatives  stand  in  awe  of  this 
masterful  old  lady  who  has  a  high  sense  of 
honor,  and  demands  obedience,  honesty,  and 
service  from  those  who  look  for  her  favors 
and  her  money.  I  detected  a  shrewd  humor 
in  her  and  an  abiding  common  sense,  and  at 
her  own  dinner-table  she  had  a  way  of  cross- 
examining  her  guests,  who  were  men  of 
political  importance  and  women  of  social 
influence,  like  a  judge  who  desires  to  get  at 
the  evidence  without  listening  to  unnecessary 
verbiage.  She  is  the  widow  of  a  successful 
business  man,  but  I  perceived  in  her  the  sense 
of  personal  power  and  family  traditions  which 
belonged  to  the  old  type  of  dowager-duchess 
in  England.  Among  butterfly  women  of 
European  cities  she  would  appear  an  austere 
and  terrible  figure  in  her  virtue  and  her  dia- 
monds, but  to  small  American  boys,  eating 
candies  at  her  side  in  the  circus,  she  is  the 
kind  and  thoughtful  aunt. 

It  was  in  Boston  that  I  met  some  other 
types  of  American  women,  not  long  enough 
to  know  them  well,  but  enough  to  see  super- 
ficial differences  of  character  between  them 
and  their  friends  of  New  York.  Needless  to 
say,  I  had  read  a  good  deal  about  Boston 
before  going  there.     In  England  the  Bos- 

53 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

tonian  tradition  is  familiar  to  us  by  the 
glory  of  such  masters  as  Oliver  Wendell 
Holmes,  Emerson,  Thoreau,  and  Nathaniel 
Hawthorne,  so  that  I  had  a  friendly  feeling 
when  I  went  about  the  city  and  saw  its 
streets  and  prim  houses,  reminiscent  of 
Cheltenham  and  other  English  towns  of 
ancient  respectability  and  modern  culture. 
After  a  lecture  there  many  Bostonians  came 
onto  the  platform,  and  I  heard  at  once  a 
difference  in  accent  from  the  intonation  of 
New  York.  It  was  a  little  more  precise, 
with  a  careful  avoidance  of  slang  phrases. 
The  people  who  spoke  to  me  were  earnest 
souls,  with  an  idealism  which  seemed  to  lift 
them  above  the  personal  prejudices  of  party 
politics.  I  should  imagine  that  some  of 
them  are  republican  rather  than  democratic 
in  instinct,  but  those  at  least  who  were  in  my 
audience  supported  the  idea  of  the  League  of 
Nations,  and  for  that  reason  did  not  wish  to 
see  President  Wilson  boiled  in  oil  or  roasted 
at  a  slow  fire.  From  my  brief  glimpses  of 
Boston  society  I  should  imagine  that  the  Pur- 
itan spirit  still  lingers  there  among  the  "best 
families"  and  that  in  little  matters  of  eti- 
quette and  social  custom  they  adhere  to  the 
rules  of  the  Early  Victorian  era  of  English  life. 

54 


SOME  PEOPLE  I  MET  IN  AMERICA 

I  was  convinced  of  this  by  one  trivial  inci- 
dent I  observed  in  a  hotel  at  Boston.  A 
lady,  obviously  in  transit  from  New  York, 
by  the  public  way  in  which  she  used  her 
powder-puff,  and  by  a  certain  cosmopolitan 
easiness  of  manner,  produced  a  gold  cigarette- 
case  from  her  muff,  and  began  to  smoke  with- 
out thinking  twice  about  it.  She  had  taken 
just  three  whiffs  when  a  colored  waiter  ap- 
proached in  the  most  deferential  manner 
and  begged  her  to  put  out  her  cigarette,  be- 
cause smoking  was  not  allowed  in  the  public 
rooms.  The  lady  from  New  York  looked 
amazed  for  a  moment.  Then  she  laughed, 
dropped  her  cigarette  into  her  coffee-cup, 
and  said:  "Oh  yes —  I  guess  I  forgot  I  was 
in  Boston!"  In  that  word  Boston  she  ex- 
pressed a  world  of  propriety,  conventional 
morality,  and  social  austerity,  a  long,  long 
way  from  the  liberty  of  New  York.  I  had 
been  told  that  a  Boston  audience  would  be 
very  cold  and  unenthusiastic,  not  because 
they  would  be  out  of  sympathy  with  the  lec- 
turer, but  because  they  were  "very  English" 
in  their  dislike  of  emotional  expression.  My 
experience  was  not  like  that,  as  I  was  re- 
lieved to  find,  and,  on  the  contrary,  those 
Bostonians  at  the  Symphony  Hall  applauded 

fi  55 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

with  most  generous  warmth  and  even  rose 
and  cheered  when  I  had  finished  my  story  of 
the  heroic  deeds  of  English  soldiers.  It  was 
a  Boston  girl  who  made  the  apologia  of  her 
people.  "I  am  sure,"  she  said,  "that  all 
those  men  and  women  who  rose  to  applaud 
went  down  on  their  knees  that  night  and 
asked  God  to  forgive  them  for  having  broken 
their  rule  of  life." 

No  doubt  Boston  society,  as  far  as  it  in- 
cludes the  old  families  rooted  in  it  for  genera- 
tions, is  conservative  in  its  point  of  view, 
and  looks  askance  at  noisy  innovations  like 
modern  American  dances,  jazz  bands,  and 
the  jolly  vulgarities  of  youth.  But,  judging 
from  my  passing  glimpses  of  college  girls  in 
the  town,  I  should  say  that  youth  puts  up  a 
healthy  opposition  to  the  "old  fogy"  philos- 
ophy, and  breaks  the  conventions  now  and 
then  with  a  crash.  One  girl  I  met  suggests 
to  me  that  Boston  produces  character  by  in- 
tensive culture,  and  is  apt  to  be  startled  by 
the  result.  Her  father  was  a  well-known 
lawyer,  and  she  inherited  his  gift  of  learning 
and  logic,  so  that  when  he  died  she  had  the 
idea  of  carrying  on  his  work.  The  war  was 
on,  and  somewhere  over  on  the  western 
front  was  a  young  English  soldier  whom  she 


56 


SOME  PEOPLE   I  MET  IN  AMERICA 

had  met  on  board  ship  and  might,  according 
to  the  chances  of  war,  never  meet  again. 
Anyhow,  she  was  restless,  and  desired  work. 
She  decided  to  study  for  the  law  examinations 
and  to  be  called  to  the  bar;  and  to  keep  her 
company,  her  mother,  who  was  her  best 
comrade,  went  into  college  with  her,  and 
shared  her  rooms.  I  like  that  idea  of  the 
mother  and  daughter  reading  and  working 
together.  It  seems  to  me  a  good  picture. 
In  due  time  she  was  called  to  the  bar,  and 
entered  the  chambers  where  her  father  had 
worked,  and  did  so  well  that  a  great  lawyer 
who  gave  her  his  cases  to  prepare  spoke  rare 
words  of  praise  about  her.  Then  the  war 
ended,  one  day,  quite  suddenly,  the  young 
English  soldier  arrived  in  Boston,  and,  after 
a  few  preliminary  inquiries  as  to  his  chance 
of  luck,  said,  "When  shall  we  get  married?" 
He  was  in  a  hurry  to  settle  down,  and  the 
mother  of  the  girl  was  scared  by  his  grim 
determination  to  carry  her  comrade  away. 
Yet  he  was  considerate.  "I  should  hate  to 
cause  your  mother  any  worry  by  hurrying 
things  on  so  fast  as  Monday,"  he  said. 
"Let  us  make  it  Tuesday."  But  the  wed- 
ding took  place  on  the  Saturday  before  the 
Tuesday,  and  the  young  lady  barrister  of 

57 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

Boston  was  whisked  away  four  days  after 
the  English  officer  came  to  America  with  a 
dream  in  his  heart  of  which  he  desired  the 
fulfilment.  Boston  was  startled.  This  ro- 
mance was  altogether  too  rapid  for  its  peace 
of  mind.  Why,  there  was  no  time  to  buy 
the  girl  a  wedding-present!  .  .  .  The  street 
boys  of  Boston  were  most  startled  by  the 
English  officer's  best  man — his  brother — 
whose  tall  hat,  tail-coat,  and  white  spats 
were  more  wonderful  than  anything  they  had 
seen  before. 

I  was  not  long  enough  in  many  towns  of 
America  to  detect  their  various  character- 
istics. Philadelphia,  I  was  told  in  New 
York,  was  so  slow  that  it  was  safe  for  people 
to  fall  out  of  windows — they  just  wafted 
down  like  gossamer — but  I  found  it  a  pleas- 
ant, bustling  place,  with  a  delightful  Old 
World  atmosphere,  like  a  bit  of  Queen 
Anne-England,  round  Independence  Hall. . . . 
Pittsburgh  by  night,  looking  down  on  its 
blast-furnaces  from  a  hill  outside,  appeared 
to  me  like  a  town  behind  the  battle-lines 
under  heavy  gun-fire,  and  I  am  convinced 
that  the  workers  in  those  factories  are  in 
the  front-line  trenches  of  life  and  deserve 
gold  medals  for  their  heroism.     I  had  not 

58 


SOME  PEOPLE  1  MET  IN   AMERICA 

been  in  the  town  ten  minutes  before  a  young 
lady  with  the  poetical  name  of  Penelope 
rang  me  up  on  the  telephone  and  implored 
me  to  take  a  walk  out  by  night  to  see  this 
strange  and  wonderful  picture,  and  I  was 
glad  of  her  advice,  though  she  did  not  offer 
to  go  as  my  guide.  Another  girl  made  her- 
self acquainted,  and  I  found  she  has  a  hero- 
worship  for  a  fellow  wrar  correspondent,  once 
of  Pittsburgh,  whose  career  she  had  fol- 
lowed through  many  battlefields. 

I  saw  Washington  in  glamorous  sunlight 
under  a  blue  sky,  and  found  my  spirit  lifted 
up  by  the  white  beauty  of  its  buildings  and 
the  spaciousness  of  its  public  gardens.  I 
had  luncheon  with  the  British  ambassador, 
curious  to  find  myself  in  an  English  house- 
hold, with  people  discussing  America  from 
the  English  point  of  view  in  the  political 
heart  of  the  United  States;  and  I  visited 
the  War  College  and  met  American  generals 
and  officers  in  the  very  brain-center  of  that 
great  army  which  I  had  seen  on  the  roads  of 
France  and  on  the  battlefields.  This  was 
the  University  of  War  as  far  as  the  American 
people  are  concerned,  and  there  were  dia- 
grams on  the  blackboards  in  the  lecture-hall 
describing  the  strategy  of  the  western  front, 

59 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

while  in  the  library  officers  and  clerks  were 
tabulating  the  history  of  the  great  massacre 
in  Europe  for  future  guidance,  which  by  the 
grace  of  God  and  the  League  of  Nations  will 
be  unnecessary  for  generations  to  come. 
I  talked  with  these  officers  and  found  them 
just  such  earnest,  serious  scientific  men  as 
I  had  met  in  American  Headquarters  in 
France,  where  they  were  conducting  war,  not 
in  our  casual,  breezy  way,  but  as  school- 
masters arranging  a  college  demonstration, 
and  overweighted  by  responsibility.  It  was 
in  a  room  in  the  Capitol  that  I  met  one 
little  lady  with  a  complete  geographical 
knowledge  of  the  great  halls  and  corridors 
of  that  splendid  building,  and  an  Irish  way 
with  her  in  her  dealings  with  American  Con- 
gressmen and  Senators.  Before  the  war  I 
used  to  meet  her  in  a  little  drawing-room 
not  far  away  from  Kensington  Palace,  Lon- 
don, and  I  imagined  in  my  innocence  that 
she  was  exclusively  interested  in  literature 
and  drama.  But  in  one  of  the  luncheon- 
rooms  of  the  Capitol — where  I  lined  up  at 
the  counter  for  a  deep-dish  pie  from  a  colored 
waitress — I  found  that  she  was  dealing  with 
more  inflammable  articles  than  those  appear- 
ing in  newspaper  columns,  being  an  organ- 

60 


SOME  PEOPLE  I  MET  IN  AMERICA 

izing  secretary  of  the  Sinn  Fein  movement  in 
the  United  States.  She  was  happy  in  her 
work,  and  spoke  of  Irish  rebellion  in  that 
bright  and  placid  way  which  belongs,  as  I 
have  often  noticed,  to  revolutionary  spirits 
who  help  to  set  nations  on  fire  and  drench 
the  world  in  blood.  Anybody  looking  at 
her  eating  that  deep-dish  pie  in  the  luncheon- 
roonfof  the  American  Houses  of  Parliament 
would  have  put  her  down  as  a  harmless  little 
lady,  engaged,  perhaps,  in  statistical  work 
on  behalf  of  Prohibition.  But  I  knew  the 
flame  in  her  soul,  kindled  by  Irish  history, 
was  of  the  same  fire  which  I  saw  burning  in 
the  eyes  of  great  mobs  whom  I  saw  passing 
one  day  in  procession  down  Fifth  Avenue, 
with  anti-English  banners  above  their  heads. 
I  should  haye  liked  to  see  more  of  Chicago. 
There  seemed  to  me  in  that  great  city  an  in- 
tense intellectual  activity,  of  conscious  and 
deliberate  energy.  Removed  by  a  thousand 
miles  from  New  York  with  its  more  cosmo- 
politan crowds  and  constant  influx  of  Euro- 
pean visitors,  it  is  self-centered  and  inde- 
pendent, and  out  of  its  immense  population 
there  are  many  minds  emerging  to  make  it  a 
center  of  musical,  artistic,  and  educational 
life,  apart  altogether  from  its  business  dynam- 

61 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

ics.  I  became  swallowed  up  in  the  crowds 
along  Michigan  Avenue,  and  was  caught  in 
the  breeze  that  blew  stiffly  down  the  highway 
of  this  "windy  city,"  and  studied  the  shops 
and  theaters  and  picture-palaces  with  a 
growing  consciousness  that  here  was  a  world 
almost  as  great  as  New  York  and,  I  imagine, 
more  essentially  American  in  character  and 
views.  That  first  morning  of  my  visit  I  was 
the  guest  of  a  club  called  the  Cliff-dwellers, 
where  the  chairman  rapped  for  order  on  the 
table  with  a  club  that  might  have  protected 
the  home  of  Prehistoric  Man,  and  addressed 
a  gathering  of  good  fellows  who,  as  jour- 
nalists, authors,  painters,  and  musicians,  are 
farthest  removed  from  that  simple  child  of 
nature  who  went  out  hunting  for  his  dinner, 
and  bashed  his  wife  when  she  gnawed  the 
meatiest  bone.  It  was  in  the  time  of  armis- 
tice, and  these  men  were  deeply  anxious 
about  the  new  problems  which  faced  Amer- 
ica and  about  the  reshaping  of  the  world's 
philosophy.  They  were  generous  and  honest 
in  their  praise  of  England's  mighty  effort  in 
the  war,  and  they  were  enthusiastic  to  a 
man  in  the  belief  that  an  Anglo-American 
alliance  was  the  best  guaranty  of  the  League 
of  Nations,  and  the  best  hope  for  the  safety 

62 


SOME  PEOPLE  I  MET  IN  AMERICA 

of  civilization.  I  came  away  with  the  belief 
that  out  of  Chicago  would  come  help  for  the 
idealists  of  our  future  civilization,  out  of 
Chicago,  whatever  men  may  say  of  its  Pit, 
and  its  slaughter-yards,  and  its  jungle  of 
industry  and  life.  For  on  the  walls  of  the 
Cliff-dwellers  were  paintings  of  men  who 
have  beauty  in  their  hearts,  and  in  the  eyes 
of  the  men  I  met  was  a  look  of  gravity  and 
thoughtfulness  in  face  of  the  world's  agonies 
and  conflict.  But  I  was  aware,  also,  that 
among  the  seething  crowds  of  that  city  were 
mobs  of  foreign-born  people  who  have  the 
spirit  of  revolution  in  their  hearts,  and  others 
who  demand  more  of  the  joy  of  life  and  less 
of  its  struggle,  and  men  of  baseness  and  bru- 
tality, coarsened  by  the  struggle  through 
which  they  have  to  push  and  thrust  in  order 
to  get  a  living.  I  listened  to  Germans  and 
foreign  Jews  in  some  of  the  streets  of  Chicago, 
and  saw  in  imagination  the  flames  and  smoke 
of  passion  that  stir  above  the  Melting-pot. 
I  have  memories  in  Chicago  of  a  little 
theatrical  manager  who  took  my  arm  and 
pressed  it  tight  with  new-born  affection,  and 
said:  "My  dearie,  I'm  doing  colossal  busi- 
ness— over  two  thousand  dollars  a  night! 
It's    broken    all    the    records.     I    go    about 

63 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

singing  with  happiness."  Success  had  made 
a  poet  of  him.  In  a  private  suite  of  rooms  in 
the  most  luxurious  hotel  of  Chicago  I  met 
one  of  the  theatrical  stars  of  America,  and 
studied  her  type  as  one  might  gaze  at  a  rare 
bird.  She  was  a  queer  little  bird,  I  found, 
with  a  childish  and  simple  way  of  speech 
which  disguised  a  little  her  immense  and 
penetrating  knowledge  of  human  nature  as 
it  is  found  in  "one-night  stands,"  in  the 
jungle  of  life  behind  the  scenes,  and  in  her 
own  grim  and  gallant  fight  for  fame.  Fame 
had  come  to  her  suddenly  and  overwhelm- 
ingly, in  Chicago,  and  New  York  was  waiting 
for  her.  The  pride  of  her  achievement 
thrilled  her  to  the  finger-tips,  and  she  was  as 
happy  as  a  little  girl  who  has  received  her 
first  doll  as  a  birthday-present.  She  talked 
to  me  about  her  technic,  about  the  way  in 
which  she  had  lived  in  her  part  before  acting 
it,  so  that  she  felt  herself  to  be  the  heroine  in 
body  and  soul.  But  what  I  liked  best — 
and  tried  to  believe — was  her  whispered 
revelation  of  her  ultimate  ambition — and 
that  was  a  quiet  marriage  with  a  boy  who 
was  "over  there,"  if  he  did  not  keep  her 
waiting  too  long.  Marriage,  and  not  fame, 
was  what  she  wanted  most  (so  she  said),  but 

64 


SOME  PEOPLE   I  MET  IN  AMERICA 

she  was  going  to  be  very,  very  careful  to 
make  the  right  one.  She  had  none  of  the 
luxurious  splendor  of  those  American  stars 
who  appear  in  fiction  and  photographs.  She 
was  a  bright  little  canary,  with  pluck,  and  a 
touch  of  genius,  and  a  shrewd  common 
sense. 

From  her  type  I  passed  to  others,  a  world 
away  in  mode  of  life — Congressmen,  leaders 
of  the  women's  suffrage  societies,  ex-gover- 
nors, business  magnates,  American  officers 
back  from  the  front,  foreign  officers  begging 
for  American  money,  British  propagandists 
— a  most  unlikely  crowd — dramatic  critics, 
shipbuilders,  and  the  society  of  New  York 
suburbs  between  Mamaroneck  and  Green- 
wich, Connecticut.  At  dinner-parties  and 
evening  receptions  I  met  these  different 
actors  in  the  great  drama  of  American  life, 
and  found  them,  in  that  time  of  armistice, 
desperately  earnest  about  the  problems  of 
peace,  intrigued  to  the  point  of  passion  about 
the  policy  of  President  Wilson,  divided  hope- 
lessly in  ideals  and  convictions,  so  that 
husbands  and  wives  had  to  declare  a  No 
Man's  Land  between  their  conflicting  views, 
and  looking  forward  to  the  future  wTith  pro- 
found uneasiness  because  of  the  threat  to  the 

65 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

"splendid  isolation"  of  the  Monroe  Doctrine 
— they  saw  it  crumbling  away  from  them — 
and  because  (more  alarming  still)  they  heard 
from  afar  the  first  rumblings  of  a  terrific 
storm  between  capital  and  labor.  They 
spoke  of  these  things  frankly,  with  an  evi- 
dent sincerity  and  with  a  fine  gravity — 
women  as  well  as  men,  young  girls  as  fear- 
lessly and  intelligently  as  bald-headed  busi- 
ness men.  Many  of  them  deplored  the  late 
entry  of  the  United  States  into  the  war,  be- 
cause they  believed  their  people  would  have 
gained  by  longer  sacrifice.  With  all  their 
pride  in  the  valor  of  their  men,  not  one  of 
them  in  my  hearing  used  a  braggart  word,  or 
claimed  too  great  a  share  in  the  honor  of 
victory.  There  was  fear  among  them  that 
their  President  was  abandoning  principles  of 
vital  import  to  their  country,  but  no  single 
man  or  woman  I  met  spoke  selfishly  of 
America's  commercial  or  political  interest, 
and  among  all  the  people  with  whom  I  came 
in  touch  there  was  a  deep  sense  of  respon- 
sibility and  a  desire  to  help  the  world  for- 
ward by  wise  action  on  the  part  of  the 
United  States.  Their  trouble  was  that  they 
lacked  clear  guidance,  and  were  groping 
blindly  about  for  the  right  thing  to  do,  in  a 

66 


SOME  PEOPLE  I  MET  IN  AMERICA 

practical,  common-sense  way.  I  had  serious 
conversations  in  those  assemblies,  until  my 
head  ached,  but  they  were  not  without  a 
lighter  side,  and  I  wTas  often  startled  by  the 
eager  way  in  which  American  middle-class 
society  abandons  the  set  etiquette  of  an 
evening  party  for  charades,  a  fox-trot  (with 
the  carpets  thrown  back),  a  game  of  "twenty 
questions,"  or  a  riot  of  laughter  between  a 
cocktail  and  a  highball.  At  those  hours  the 
youth  of  America  was  revealed.  Its  society 
is  not  so  old  as  our  tired,  saddened  people  of 
Europe,  who  look  back  with  melancholy 
upon  the  four  years  in  which  their  young  men 
perished,  and  forward  without  great  hope. 
The  vitality  of  America  has  hardly  been  i 
touched  by  her  sacrifice,  and  the  heart  of  j 
America  is  high. 


Ill 

THINGS   I   LIKE    IN   THE   UNITED    STATES 

SOME  Englishmen,  I  am  told,  go  to  the 
United  States  with  a  spirit  of  criticism, 
and  search  round  for  things  that  seem  to 
them  objectionable,  taking  no  pains  to  con- 
ceal their  hostile  point  of  view.  They  are 
so  hopelessly  insular  that  they  resent  any 
little  differences  in  social  custom  between 
American  and  English  life,  and  sum  up  their 
annoyance  by  saying,  "We  don't  do  that 
sort  of  thing  in  England ! "  Well,  that  seems 
to  me  a  foolish  way  of  approach  to  any  coun- 
try, and  the  reason  why  some  types  of  Eng- 
lishmen are  so  unpopular  in  France,  Italy, 
and  other  countries,  where  they  go  about 
regarding  "the  natives,"  as  they  call  them, 
with  arrogance  in  their  eyes,  and  talk,  as  an 
English  officer,  not  of  that  type,  expressed  it 
to  me,  "as  though  they  had  bad  smells  at 
the  end  of  their  noses."  I  am  bound  to  say 
that  during  my  visit  to  the  United  States  I 
found  much  more  to  admire  than  to  criticize, 

68 


THINGS  I  LIKE  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES 

and  perhaps  because  I  was  on  the  lookout 
for  things  to  like  rather  than  to  dislike  I  had 
one  of  the  best  times  of  my  life — in  some 
ways  the  very  best — and  came  away  with 
respect,  admiration,  and  gratitude  for  the 
American  people.  There  are  so  many  things 
I  like  in  their  character  and  way  of  life  that 
I  should  be  guilty  of  gushing  if  I  put  them 
all  down,  but  although  I  have  no  doubt  they 
have  many  faults,  like  most  people  in  this 
world,  I  prefer  to  remember  the  pleasant, 
rather  than  the  unpleasant,  qualities  they 
possess,  especially  as  they  left  the  most 
dominant  impression  on  my  mind. 

I  think  every  Englishman,  however  critical, 
would  agree  that  he  is  struck  at  once,  on  his 
first  visit  to  America,  by  the  clean,  bright, 
progressive  spirit  of  life  in  the  smaller 
towns  beyond  the  turmoil  of  New  York.  I 
have  already  described  the  sensational  effect 
produced  upon  one's  imagination  by  that 
great  city,  and  have  given  some  glimpses  of 
various  aspects  of  the  social  life  which  I  had 
the  good  fortune  to  see  with  untiring  in- 
terest; but  I  confess  that  the  idea  of  living 
in  New  York  would  affright  me  because  of 
its  wear  and  tear  upon  the  nerves,  and  I 
think  that  the  "commuters"  who  dwell  in 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

the  suburbs  have  good  sense  and  better  luck. 
The  realities  of  America — the  average  idea, 
the  middle-class  home,  the  domestic  quali- 
ties upon  which  a  nation  is  built — are  to  be 
found  more  deeply  rooted  in  the  suburbs 
and  smaller  towns  than  in  the  whirligig  of 
Manhattan  Island,  to  which  a  million  and  a 
half  people,  I  am  told,  come  every  day,  and 
from  which,  after  business  or  pleasure,  they 
go  away.  To  me  there  was  something  very 
attractive  in  the  construction  of  such  places 
as  Rye,  Port  Chester,  Greenwich,  and  Stam- 
ford, an  hour  away  from  New  York,  and 
many  other  townships  of  similar  size  in  other 
parts  of  the  United  States.  I  liked  the  style 
of  their  houses,  those  neat  buildings  of  wood 
with  overlapping  shingles,  and  wide  porches 
and  verandas  where  people  may  sit  out  on 
summer  days,  with  shelter  from  the  sun; 
and  I  liked  especially  the  old  Colonial  type 
of  house,  as  I  think  it  is  called,  with  a  tall 
white  pillar  on  each  side  of  its  portico,  and 
well-proportioned  windows,  so  that  the  rooms 
have  plenty  of  light,  and  as  much  air  as  the 
central-heating  system  permits — and  that  is 
not  much.  To  English  eyes  accustomed  to 
dingy  brick  houses  in  the  suburbs  of  big 
cities,  to  the  dreary  squalor  of  some  new 

70 


THINGS  I  LIKE  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES 

little  town  which  straggles  around  a  filthy 
railway  station,  with  refuse-heaps  in  unde- 
veloped fields,  and  a  half -finished  "High 
Street,"  where  a  sweetstuff-shop,  a  stationer, 
and  an  estate  agent  establish  themselves  in 
the  gloomy  hope  of  business,  these  American 
villages  look  wonderfully  clean,  bright,  and 
pleasant.  I  noticed  that  in  each  one  of  them 
there  were  five  institutions  in  which  the 
spirit  of  the  community  was  revealed — the 
bank,  the  post-office,  the  school,  the  church, 
and  the  picture-palace.  The  bank  is  gener- 
ally the  handsomest  building  in  the  place, 
with  a  definite  attempt  to  give  it  some  dig- 
nity of  architecture  and  richness  of  decora- 
tion. Inside  it  has  marble  pillars  and  pan- 
els, brass  railings  at  the  receipt  of  custom,  a 
brightly  burnished  mechanism  for  locking  up 
the  safe,  a  tiled  floor  of  spotless  cleanliness. 
The  local  tradesman  feels  secure  in  putting 
his  money  in  such  a  place  of  dignity,  the 
local  lady  likes  to  come  here  in  the  morning 
(unless  she  has  overdrawn  her  account)  for 
a  chat  with  the  bank  manager  or  one  of  his 
gentlemanly  assistants.  It  is  a  social  ren- 
dezvous dedicated  to  the  spirit  of  success, 
and  the  bank  manager,  who  knows  the  pri- 
vate business  and  the  social  adventures  of 

6  71 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

his  clients,  is  in  a  position  of  confidence  and 
esteem.  He  is  pleased  to  shake  the  finger- 
tips of  a  lady  through  the  brass  railings; 
while  she  is  pleased  to  ask  him,  "How  do  you 
like  my  new  hat?"  and  laughs  when,  with 
grave  eyes,  he  expresses  sympathy  with  her 
husband.  "  Twenty  years  ago  he  was  serving 
behind  the  counter  in  a  dry-goods  store. 
Now  he  has  a  million  dollars  to  his  credit." 
Everybody  brightens  at  this  story  of  suc- 
cess. The  fact  that  a  man  starts  as  a 
butcher-boy  or  a  bell-boy  is  all  in  his  favor 
in  social  prestige.  There  is  no  snobbishness, 
contemptuous  of  humble  origin,  and  I  found 
a  spirit  of  good-natured  democracy  among 
the  people  I  watched  in  the  local  bank. 

Competing  with  the  bank  in  architectural 
dignity  is  the  village  post-office,  generally  of 
white  stone,  or  wood,  with  the  local  Roll  of 
Honor  on  the  green  outside,  and,  inside,  a 
number  of  picture-posters  calling  to  the 
patriotism  of  the  American  people  to  sup- 
port the  Liberty  Loan — the  fifth  when  I  was 
there.  Small  boys  at  the  counter  are  buying 
thrift  stamps.  Chauffeurs  who  have  driven 
down  from  country  houses  are  collecting  the 
letters  of  the  family  from  lockers,  with  pri- 
vate   keys.     College    girls    are    exchanging 

72 


THE    SOCIAL   ATMOSPHERE    OF   AN    AMERICAN    POST-OFFICE 


THINGS  I  LIKE  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES 

confidences  at  the  counters.  I  liked  the  so- 
cial atmosphere  of  an  American  post-office. 
I  seemed  to  see  a  visible  friendliness  here 
between  the  state  and  the  people.  Then 
there  is  the  school,  and  I  must  say  that  I 
was  overwhelmed  with  admiration  for  the 
American  system  of  education  and  for  the 
buildings  in  which  it  is  given.  England 
lags  a  long  way  behind  here,  with  its  old- 
fashioned  hotch-potch  of  elementary  schools, 
church  schools,  "academies  for  young  gen- 
tlemen"— the  breeding-grounds  of  snobs — 
grammar-schools,  and  private,  second-rate 
colleges;  all  of  which  complications  are 
swept  away  by  the  clean  simplicity  of  the 
American  state  school,  to  which  boys  of 
every  class  may  go  without  being  handi- 
capped by  the  caste  system  which  is  the 
curse  of  England.  If  the  school  to  which  I 
went  at  Montclair,  or  another  at  Elizabeth, 
New  Jersey,  or  another  at  Toledo,  is  at  all 
typical  of  American  schools  generally  (and 
I  think  that  is  so),  I  take  my  hat  off  to  the 
educational  authorities  of  America  and  to 
the  spirit  of  the  people  which  inspires  them. 
The  school  at  Montclair  was,  I  remember, 
a  handsome  building  like  one  of  the  English 
colleges  for  women  at  Oxford  or  Cambridge, 

73 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

with  admirably  designed  rooms,  light,  airy, 
and  beautiful  with  their  polished  paneling. 
The  lecture-hall  was  a  spacious  place  hold- 
ing, I  suppose,  nearly  a  thousand  people, 
and  I  was  astonished  at  its  proportions  when 
I  had  my  first  glimpse  of  it  before  lecturing, 
under  the  guidance  of  the  head-mistress  and 
some  of  the  ladies  on  her  committee.  Those 
women  impressed  me  as  being  wise  and 
broad-minded  souls,  not  shut  up  in  narrow 
educational  theories,  but  with  a  knowledge 
of  life  and  human  nature,  and  a  keen  enthu- 
siasm for  their  work.  At  Toledo  I  saw  the 
best  type  of  provincial  school,  and  certainly 
as  an  architectural  model  it  was  beyond  all 
words  of  praise,  built  in  what  we  call  the 
Tudor  style,  in  red  brick,  ivy  covered,  with 
long  oriel  windows,  so  that  it  lifts  up  the 
tone  of  the  whole  town  because  of  its  dig- 
nity and  beauty.  Here,  too,  was  a  fine 
lecture-hall,  easily  convertible  into  a  theater, 
with  suitable  scenery  for  any  school  play. 
It  was  a  committee  of  boys  who  organized 
the  lectures,  and  one  of  them  acted  as  my 
guide  over  the  school-building  and  showed 
me,  among  other  educational  arrangements, 
a  charming  little  flat,  or  apartment-house, 
completely  furnished  in  every  detail  in  bed- 

74 


THINGS  I  LIKE  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES 

room,  sitting-room,  and  kitchen,  for  the 
training  of  girls  in  domestic  service,  cookery, 
and  the  decoration  of  the  home.  Here,  as 
in  many  other  things,  the  American  mind 
had  reached  out  to  an  ideal  and  linked  it  up 
with  practical  method.  Equally  good  were 
the  workshops  where  the  boys  are  trained  in 
carpentry  and  mechanics.  .  .  .  Well,  all  that 
kind  of  thing  makes  for  greatness  in  a  nation. 
The  American  people  are  not,  I  think,  better 
educated  than  English  people  in  the  actual 
storing-up  of  knowledge,  but  they  are  edu- 
cated in  better  physical  conditions,  with  a 
brighter  atmosphere  around  them  in  their 
class-rooms  and  in  their  playgrounds,  and 
with  a  keener  appreciation  in  the  social  in- 
fluences surrounding  the  schoolhouse  of  the 
inherent  right  of  every  American  boy  and 
girl  to  have  equal  opportunities  along  the 
road  to  knowledge  and  success.  It  is  this 
sense  of  opportunity,  and  the  entire  absence 
of  snob  privileges,  which  I  liked  best  in  these 
glimpses  I  gained  of  young  America.  .  .  . 

I  mentioned  another  institution  which 
occupies  a  prominent  place  in  every  American 
township.  That  is  the  picture-palace.  It 
is  impossible  to  overrate  the  influence  upon 
the    minds    and    characters    of    the    people 

75 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

which  is  exercised  by  that  house  of  assembly. 
It  has  become  part  of  the  life  of  the  American 
people  more  essentially  than  we  know  it  in 
England,  though  it  has  spread  with  a  mush- 
room growth  in  English  towns  and  villages. 
But  in  the  United  States  the  picture-palace 
and  "The  Silent  Drama,"  as  they  call  it, 
are  more  elaborately  organized,  and  the  mo- 
tion pictures  are  produced  with  an  amount 
of  energy,  imagination,  and  wealth  which 
are  far  in  excess  of  the  similar  efforts  in 
England.  A  visit  to  the  "movies"  is  the 
afternoon  or  evening  recreation  of  every 
class  and  age  of  American  citizenship.  It 
is  a  democratic  habit  from  which  few  escape. 
Outside  the  picture-palace  in  a  little  town 
like  Stamford  one  sees  a  number  of  expensive 
motor-cars  drawn  up  while  the  lady  of  leisure 
gets  her  daily  dose  of  "romance"  and  while 
her  chauffeur,  in  the  gallery,  watches  scenes 
of  high  life  with  the  cynical  knowledge  of  a 
looker-on.  Nursemaids  alleviate  the  bore- 
dom  of  domestic  service  by  taking  their 
children  to  see  the  pictures  for  an  hour  or 
two,  and  small  boys  and  girls,  with  candy  or 
chewing-gum  to  keep  them  quiet,  puzzle  out 
the  meaning  of  marvelous  melodrama,  won- 
der why  lovers  do  such  strange  things  in 

76 


THINGS  I  LIKE  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES 

their  adventures  on  the  way  to  marriage; 
and  they  watch  with  curiosity  and  surprise 
the  ghastly  grimaces  of  " close-up"  heroines 
in  contortions  of  amorous  despair,  and  the 
heaving  breasts,  the  rolling  eyes,  and  the 
sickly  smiles  of  padded  heroes,  who  are 
suffering,  temporarily,  from  thwarted  affec- 
tion. The  history  of  the  world  is  ransacked 
for  thrilling  dramas,  and  an  American  audi- 
ence watches  all  the  riotous  splendor  and 
licentiousness  of  Babylon  or  ancient  Rome, 
while  Theda  Bara,  the  Movie  Queen,  writhes 
in  amorous  ecstasy,  or  poisons  innumerable 
lovers,  or  stings  herself  to  death  with  ser- 
pents. Royalists  and  Roundheads,  Pilgrim 
Fathers  and  New  England  witches,  the 
French  Revolution  and  the  American  Civil 
War,  are  phases  of  history  which  provide 
endless  pictures  of  "soul-stirring  interest"; 
but  more  popular  are  domestic  dramas  of 
modern  life,  in  which  the  luxury  of  our 
present  civilization,  as  it  is  imagined  and 
exaggerated  by  the  movie  managers,  reveal 
to  simple  folk  the  wickedness  of  wealthy 
villains,  the  dangers  of  innocent  girlhood, 
and  the  appalling  adventures  of  psychology 
into  which  human  nature  is  led  when  "love" 
takes  possession  of  the  heart.     It  is  impos- 

77 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

sible  to  say  what  effect  all  that  has  upon  the 
mentality  of  America.  The  utter  falsity  of 
it  all,  the  treacly,  sentiment  of  the  "love" 
episodes,  and  the  flaming  vice  of  the  vicious, 
would  have  a  perverting  influence  on  public 
imagination  if  it  were  taken  seriously.  But 
I  suppose  that  the  common  sense  of  American 
people  reacts  against  the  absurdity  of  these 
melodramas  after  yielding  to  the  sensation 
of  them.  Yet  I  met  one  lady  who  told  me 
she  goes  every  free  afternoon  to  one  of  these 
entertainments,  with  a  deliberate  choice  of 
film-plays  depicting  passion  and  caveman 
stuff  "in  order  to  get  a  thrill  before  dinner 
to  relieve  the  boredom  of  domesticity." 
That  seems  to  me  as  bad  as  the  drug  habit, 
and  must  in  the  long  run  sap  the  moral  and 
spiritual  foundations  of  a  woman's  soul. 
Fortunately,  there  is  a  tendency  now  among 
the  c: movie  merchants"  to  employ  good 
authors  who  will  provide  them  with  simple 
and  natural  plots,  and  in  any  case  there  is 
always  Charlie  Chaplin  for  laughter,  and 
pictures  of  scenery  and  animal  life,  and  the 
news  of  the  week  depicting  scenes  of  current 
history  in  all  parts  of  the  world.  It  would 
be  absurd  as  well  as  impossible  to  abolish 
the  film-picture  as  an  influence  in  American 

78 


THINGS  I  LIKE  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES 

life,  and  I  dare  say  that,  balancing  good  with 
bad,  the  former  tips  the  swing,  because  of 
an  immense  source  of  relaxation  and  enter- 
tainment provided  by  the  picture-palace  in 
small  communities. 

What  appealed  to  me  more  in  my  brief 
study  of  American  social  life  outside  New 
York  was  another  popular  institution  known 
as  the  roadside  inn.  In  some  way  it  is  a 
conscious  endeavor  to  get  back  to  the  sim- 
plicity and  good  cheer  of  old-fashioned  times, 
when  the  grandfathers  and  grandmothers  of 
the  present  generation  used  to  get  down  from 
their  coaches  when  the  horses  were  changed, 
or  the  snowdrifts  were  deep,  and  go  gladly 
to  the  warmth  of  a  log  fire,  in  a  wayside 
hostelry,  while  orders  were  given  for  a  dinner 
of  roast  duck,  and  a  bowl  of  punch  was 
brewed  by  the  ruddy -faced  innkeeper.  It  is 
a  tradition  which  is  kept  fresh  in  the  imagi- 
nation of  modern  Americans  by  the  genius  of 
Charles  Dickens,  Washington  Irving,  and  a 
host  of  writers  and  painters  who  reproduce 
the  atmosphere  of  English  life  in  the  days  of 
coaching,  highwaymen,  romance,  and  roast 
beef.  The  spirit  of  Charles  Dickens  is  care- 
fully suggested  to  all  wayfarers  in  one  road- 
side inn  I  visited,  about  an  hour  away  from 

79 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

New  York,  and  called  "The  Pickwick  Inn." 
It  is  built  in  the  style  of  Tudor  England, 
with  wooden  beams  showing  through  its 
brickwork  and  windows  divided  into  little 
leaded  panes,  and  paneled  rooms  furnished 
with  wooden  settles  and  gate-leg  tables. 
Colored  prints  depicting  scenes  in  the  im- 
mortal history  of  Mr.  Pickwick  brighten  the 
walls  within.  Outside  there  swings  a  sign- 
board such  as  one  sees  still  outside  country 
inns  standing  on  the  edge  of  village  greens 
in  England.  I  found  it  a  pleasant  place, 
where  one  could  talk  better  with  a  friend 
than  in  a  gilded  restaurant  of  New  York, 
with  a  jazz  band  smiting  one's  eardrums; 
and  the  company  there  was  interesting.  In 
spite  of  the  departure  of  coaching  days, 
which  gave  life  and  bustle  to  the  old  inns  of 
the  past,  the  motor-car  brings  travelers  and 
a  touch  of  romance  to  these  modern  sub- 
stitutes. There  were  several  cars  outside 
the  "Pickwick,"  and  I  guessed  by  the  look 
of  the  party  within  that  they  had  come  from 
New  York  for  a  country  outing,  a  simple 
meal,  and  private  conversation.  "Better  a 
dinner  of  herbs  where  love  is — "  Under  the 
portrait  of  Mr.  Pickwick  in  a  quiet  corner  of 
one  of  the  old-fashioned  rooms  a  young  man 

80 


THINGS  I  LIKE  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES 

and  woman  sat  with  their  elbows  on  the  table 
and  their  chins  propped  in  the  palms  of  their 
hands,  and  their  faces  not  so  far  away  that 
they  had  any  need  to  shout  to  each  other 
the  confidences  which  made  both  pairs  of 
eyes  remarkably  bright.  The  young  man 
was  one  of  those  square-shouldered,  clean- 
shaven, gray-eyed  fellows  whom  I  came  to 
know  as  a  type  on  the  roads  to  Amiens  and 
Albert.  The  girl  had  put  her  dust-cloak 
over  the  back  of  her  chair,  but  still  wore  a 
veil  tied  round  her  hat  and  under  her  chin — 
a  little  pointed  chin  dug  firmly  into  her  palm, 
and  modeled  with  the  same  delicacy  of  line 
as  the  lips  about  which  a  little  smile  wavered, 
and  as  the  nose  which  kept  its  distance,  with 
perfect  discretion,  from  that  of  the  young 
man  opposite,  so  that  the  waiter  might  have 
slipped  a  menu-card  between  them.  She 
had  a  string  of  pearls  round  her  neck  which 
would  certainly  have  been  the  first  prize  of 
any  highwayman  holding  up  her  great-grand- 
mamma's coach,  and  judging  from  other 
little  signs  of  luxury  as  it  is  revealed  in 
Fifth  Avenue,  I  felt  certain  that  the  young 
lady  did  not  live  far  from  the  heart  of  New 
York  and  had  command  of  its  treasure- 
houses.  .  .  .  Two  other  groups  in  the  room, 

81 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

sitting  at  separate  tables,  belonged  obviously 
to  one  party.  They  were  young  people,  for 
the  most  part,  with  one  elderly  lady  whose 
white  hair  and  shrewd,  smiling  eyes  made  all 
things  right  with  youthful  adventure,  and 
with  one  old  fogy,  bland  of  countenance  and 
expansive  in  the  waistcoat  line,  who  seemed 
to  regard  it  as  a  privilege  to  pay  for  the  large 
appetites  of  the  younger  company.  Any- 
how he  paid  for  at  least  eight  portions  of 
chicken  okra,  followed  by  eight  plates  of 
roast  turkey  and  baked  potatoes,  and,  not 
counting  sundries,  nine  serves  of  deep-dish 
pie.  The  ninth,  unequal,  share  went,  in 
spite  of  warnings,  protests,  and  ridicule  from 
free-spoken  companions,  to  a  plump  girl 
with  a  pigtail,  obviously  home  from  college 
for  a  spell,  who  said:  "I  guess  I  sha'n't  die 
from  overeating,  though  it's  the  way  I'd 
choose  if  I  had  to  quit.  An  appetite  is  like 
love.  Its  dangers  are  exaggerated,  and  sel- 
dom fatal."  This  speech,  delivered  in  all 
solemnity,  aroused  a  tumult  of  mirth  from 
several  young  women  of  grown-up  appear- 
ance— at  least  they  had  advanced  beyond  the 
pigtail  stage — and  under  cover  of  this  one  of 
them  deliberately  "made  up"  her  face  till  it 
bloomed  like  a  rose  in  June.     In  another 


THINGS  I  LIKE  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES 

corner  of  the  Pickwick  Inn  sat  a  lonely  man 
whose  appearance  interested  me  a  good  deal. 
He  was  a  man  of  middle  age,  with  black  hair 
turning  white,  and  very  dark,  melancholy 
eyes  in  a  pale,  ascetic  face.  I  have  seen  his 
type  many  times  in  the  Cafe  de  l'Odeon  on 
the  "  Latin  "  side  of  Paris,  and  I  was  surprised 
to  find  it  in  a  roadside  inn  of  the  United 
States.  A  friend  of  mine,  watching  the  di- 
rection of  my  gaze,  said,  "Yes,  that  is  a 
remarkable  man — one  of  the  best-known 
architects  in  America,  and,  among  other 
things,  the  designer  of  the  Victory  decora- 
tions of  New  York."  He  came  over  to  our 
table  and  I  had  a  talk  with  him — a  strange 
conversation,  in  which  this  man  of  art  spoke 
mostly  of  war,  from  unusual  angles  of 
thought.  His  idea  seemed  to  me  that  peace 
is  only  a  preparation  for  war,  and  that  war 
is  not  the  abnormal  thing  which  most  people 
think,  but  the  normal,  because  it  is  the  neces- 
sary conflict  by  which  human  character  and 
destiny  are  shaped.  He  seemed  to  think 
that  the  psychology  of  the  world  had  become 
twisted  and  weakened  by  too  much  peace 
so  that  the  sight  of  armless  or  legless  men  was 
horrifying,  whereas  people  should  be  accus- 
tomed  to   such  sights  and   take  them  for 

83 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

granted,  because  that,  with  all  pain  and 
suffering,  is  the  price  of  life.  I  disagreed 
with  him  profoundly,  believing  that  war  in 
ninety-nine  cases  out  of  a  hundred  is  un- 
necessary and  due  to  the  stupidities  of  people 
who  are  doped  by  spell-words  put  upon  them 
by  their  leaders;  but  I  was  interested  in 
getting  this  viewpoint  from  a  man  whose 
whole  life  has  been  devoted  to  beauty.  It 
seemed  to  me  the  strangest  paradox.  ...  A 
roadside  inn  in  the  United  States  is  a  good 
place  for  the  study  of  psychology  and  social 
habits  in  America.  One  custom  which  hap- 
pens here  during  winter  and  summer  evenings 
is  a  local  dance  given  by  some  inhabitant  of 
the  neighborhood  who  finds  more  spacious- 
ness here  for  a  party  of  guests  than  in  his 
own  homestead.  The  rugs  and  chairs  are 
put  away,  and  the  floor  is  polished  for  danc- 
ing. Outside,  the  inn  is  decorated  with 
colored  lamps  and  lanterns,  and  a  bright 
light  streams  through  the  leaded  window- 
panes  across  the  road  from  New  York.  The 
metal  of  many  machines  sparkles  in  the 
shadow  world  beyond  the  lanterns.  Through 
the  open  windows,  if  the  night  is  mild,  comes 
the  ragtime  music  of  a  string  band  and  the 
sound  of  women's  laughter.   Sometimes  queer 

84 


THINGS  I  LIKE  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES 

figures,  like  ghosts  of  history,  pass  through 
the  swing-doors,  for  it  is  a  fancy-dress  dance 
in  the  inn,  and  there  is  a  glimpse  of  Colum- 
bine in  her  fluffy  white  skirt,  with  long  white 
stockings,  and  with  her  hand  on  the  arm  of  a 
tall  young  Pierrot;  while  a  lady  of  the  court 
of  Marie  Antoinette  trips  beside  the  figure  of 
a  scarlet  Devil,  and  a  little  Puritan  girl  of 
New  England  (two  hundred  years  ago)  passes 
in  with  Monsieur  Beaucaire  in  his  white- 
satin  coat  and  flowered  waistcoat  and  silk 
stockings  above  buckled  shoes.  I  like  the 
idea  and  the  customs  of  the  roadside  inn,  for 
it  helps  to  make  human  society  sweet  and 
friendly  in  villages  beyond  the  glare  of 
America's  great  cities. 

To  study  a  people,  however,  one  must  see 
them  in  theirliornes,  and  I  was  fortunate  in 
having  friends  who  took  me  into  their  home 
life.  When  I  went  there  it  was  at  a  time 
when  American  homes  were  excited  and  happy 
after  the  armistice,  and  when  the  soldiers 
who  had  been  "over  there"  were  coming 
back,  with  victory  and  honor.  In  many 
homes  of  the  United  States,  scattered  far  and 
wide,  there  was  not  happiness,  but  sorrow, 
because  in  the  victory  march  down  Fifth 
Avenue  there  would  be  for  some  of  the  on- 

85 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

lookers  one  figure  missing — the  figure  of 
some  college  boy  who  had  gone  marching 
away  with  smiling  eyes  and  a  stiff  upper  lip, 
or  the  figure  of  some  middle-aged  fellow  who 
waved  his  hand  to  a  group  of  small  children 
and  one  woman  who  turned  to  hide  her 
tears.  There  were  empty  chairs  in  the  home- 
steads of  the  United  States,  and  empty 
hearts  on  Armistice  Day — and  afterward. 
But  I  did  not  see  them,  and  I  thought  of  the 
many  homes  in  England  desolated  by  the 
appalling  sacrifice  of  youth,  so  that  in  every 
town,  and  in  every  street,  there  are  houses 
out  of  which  all  hope  in  life  has  gone,  leaving 
behind  a  dreadful  dreariness,  an  incurable 
loneliness,  mocking  at  Victory.  There  was 
one  home  I  went  to  where  a  mother  of  cheery 
babes  waited  for  her  man  with  an  eager  joy 
she  did  not  try  to  hide.  The  smallest  babe 
had  been  born  while  he  was  away,  a  boy 
baby  with  the  gift  of  laughter  from  the 
fairy  godmother;  and  there  was  great  excite- 
ment at  the  thought  of  the  first  interview 
between  father  and  son.  All  the  community 
in  the  neighborhood  of  this  house  in  West- 
chester County  took  a  personal  interest  in 
this  meeting  when  "the  Major"  should  see 
his  latest  born,  and  when  the  wife  should 

86 


THINGS  I  LIKE  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES 

meet  her  man  again.  They  had  kept  his 
memory  green  and  had  cheered  up  the  lone- 
liness of  his  wife  by  making  a  rendezvous  of 
his  house.  She  had  played  up  wonderfully, 
with  a  pluck  that  never  failed,  and  a  spirit  of 
comradeship  to  all  her  husband's  friends, 
especially  if  he  wore  khaki  and  was  far  from 
his  own  folk.  One  was  always  certain  of 
meeting  a  merry  crowd  at  cocktail  time. 
With  some  ceremony  a  party  of  friends  were 
conducted  to  the  cellar  to  see  how  a  careful 
housewife  with  a  hospitable  husband  got 
ahead  of  prohibition.  .  .  .  Then  the  Major 
came  back,  a  little  overwhelmed  by  the 
warmth  of  his  greeting  from  old  friends,  a 
little  dazed  by  the  sharp  contrast  betwreen 
war  and  peace,  moved  to  his  depths  by  the 
first  sight  of  Peter,  his  boy  baby.  One  day 
at  dinner  he  described  how  he  had  heard  the 
news  of  Peter  in  the  war  zone.  He  bought 
a  bottle  of  champagne  to  celebrate  the  event 
— it  was  the  only  bottle  to  be  had  for  love 
or  money — and  went  round  to  the  mess  to 
call  a  toast.  There  were  many  officers,  and 
the  champagne  did  not  give  them  full  glasses, 
but  in  a  sparkling  drop  or  two  they  drank 
to  the  son  of  this  good  officer  and  good  com- 
rade.    I  was  glad  to  get  a  glimpse  of  that 

7  87 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

American  home  and  of  the  two  small  girls 
in  it,  who  had  the  habit,  which  I  find  pleasant 
among  the  children  of  America,  of  dropping  a 
bob  courtesy  to  any  grown-up  visitor.  The 
children  of  America  have  the  qualities  of 
their  nation,  simplicity,  common  sense,  and 
self-reliance.  They  are  not  so  bashful  as 
English  boys  and  girls,  and  they  are  free 
from  the  little  constraints  of  nursery  eti- 
quette which  make  so  many  English  children 
afraid  to  open  their  mouths.  They  are  also 
free  entirely  from  that  juvenile  snobbishness 
which  is  still  cultivated  in  English  society, 
where  boys  and  girls  of  well-to-do  parents 
are  taught  to  look  down  with  contempt  upon 
children  of  the  poorer  classes.  I  sat  down  at 
table  many  mornings  with  a  small  boy  and 
girl  who  were  representative,  I  have  no  doubt, 
of  Young  America  in  the  making.  The  boy, 
Dick,  had  an  insatiable  curiosity  about  the 
way  things  work  in  the  world,  and  about  the 
make-up  of  the  world  itself.  To  satisfy  that 
curiosity  he  searched  the  Children  s  Booh  of 
Knowledge,  the  encyclopedias  in  the  library, 
and  the  brain  of  any  likely  person,  such  as 
the  Irish  chauffeur  and  gardener,  for  scraps 
of  useful  information.  In  games  of  "twenty 
questions,"  played  across  the  luncheon-table, 

88 


THINGS  I  LIKE  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES 

he  chose  mountains  in  Asia,  or  rivers  in 
Africa,  or  parts  of  complicated  engines,  put- 
ting the  company  to  shame  by  their  igno- 
rance of  geography  and  mechanics.  For 
sheer  personal  pleasure  he  worked  out  sums 
in  arithmetic  when  he  wakened  early  in  the 
morning.  His  ambition  is  to  be  an  engineer, 
and  he  is  already  designing  monster  air- 
planes, and  electrical  machines  of  fantastic 
purpose — like,  I  suppose,  millions  of  other 
small  boys  in  America.  The  girl,  aged  eight, 
seemed  to  me  the  miniature  representative 
of  all  American  girlhood,  and  for  that  reason 
is  a  source  of  apprehension  to  her  mother, 
who  has  to  camouflage  her  amusement  at 
this  mite's  audacity,  and  looks  forward  with 
a  thrill  of  anxiety  and  delight  to  the  time 
when  Joan  will  put  her  hair  up  and  play  hell 
with  boys'  hearts.  Joan  has  big,  wondering 
eyes,  which  she  already  uses  for  cajolery  and 
blandishment.  Joan  has  a  sense  of  humor 
which  is  alarming  in  an  elf  of  her  size.  Joan 
can  tell  the  most  almighty  "whoppers,"  with 
an  air  of  innocence  which  would  deceive  an 
angel.  Joan  has  a  passionate  temper  when 
thwarted  of  her  will,  a  haughty  arrogance  of 
demeanor  before  which  grown  men  quail, 
and  a  warm-hearted  affection  for  people  who 

89 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

please  her  which  exacts  forgiveness  of  all 
naughtiness.  She  dances  for  sheer  joy  of 
life,  lives  in  imagination  with  fairies,  screams 
with  desire  at  the  sight  of  glittering  jewels 
and  fine  feathers,  and  weeps  passionately  at 
times  because  she  is  not  old  enough  to  go 
with  her  mother  to  dinner  in  New  York. 
In  another  ten  years,  when  she  goes  to  col- 
lege, there  will  be  the  deuce  of  a  row  in  her 
rooms,  and  three  years  later  New  York  will 
be  invaded  by  a  pair  of  hazel  eyes  which  will 
complicate,  still  further,  the  adventure  of 
life  east  and  west  of  Fifth  Avenue.  Those 
two  young  people  go  forth  to  school  every 
morning,  from  a  country  house  in  Connecti- 
cut, in  a  "flivver"  driven  by  the  Irish  chauf- 
feur, with  whom  they  are  the  best  of  friends. 
Now  and  again  they  are  allowed  the  use  of 
the  Cadillac  car  and  spread  themselves  under 
the  rugs  with  an  air  of  luxury  and  arrogance, 
redeemed  by  a  wink  from  Dick,  as  though  to 
say,  "What  a  game — this  life!"  and  a  sweep 
of  Joan's  eyelashes  conveying  the  information 
that  a  princess  of  the  United  States  is  about 
to  attend  the  educational  establishment 
which  she  is  pleased  to  honor  with  her  pres- 
ence, and  where  she  hopes  to  be  extremely 
naughty  to-day,  just  to  make  things  hum. 

90 


THINGS  I  LIKE  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES 

This  boy  and  girl  are  good  and  close  com- 
rades between  the  times  they  pull  each 
other's  hair,  and  have  a  profound  respect  for 
each  other  in  spite  of  an  intimate  knowledge 
of  their  respective  frailties  and  sinfulness. 
Joan  knows  that  Dick  invariably  gets  his 
sums  right,  whereas  she  invariably  gets  them 
wrong.  She  knows  that  his  truthfulness  is\ 
impregnable  and  painful  in  its  deadly  accu- 
racy. She  knows  that  his  character  is  as  ' 
solid  as  a  rock  and  that  he  is  patient  up  to 
the  point  when  by  exasperation  she  asks  for 
a  bang  on  the  head,  and  gets  it.  Dick  knows 
that  Joan  is  more  subtle  in  imagination  than 
he  can  ever  hope  to  be,  and  that  she  can 
twist  him  round  her  little  finger  when  she  sets 
out  deliberately  thereto,  in  order  to  get  the 
first  use  of  the  new  toy  which  came  to  him  on 
his  birthday,  the  pencil  which  he  has  just 
sharpened  for  his  own  drawing,  or  the  pic- 
ture-book which  he  has  just  had  as  a  school 
prize.  "You  know  mother  says  you  mustn't 
be  so  terrible  selfish,"  says  Joan,  in  answer 
to  violent  protests,  and  Dick  knows  that  he 
must  pay  the  price  of  peace.  He  also  knows 
that  Joan  loves  him  devotedly,  pines  for  him 
when  he  is  away  even  for  a  little  while,  and 
admires  his  knowledge  and  efficiency  with 

91 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

undisguised  hero-worship,  except  when  she 
wants  to  queen  it  over  him,  for  the  sake  of  his 
soul.  I  think  of  them  in  a  little  white  house 
perched  on  flower-covered  rocks,  within 
sight  of  the  Sound  through  a  screen  of  birch 
trees.  Inside  the  house  there  are  some  choice 
old  bits  of  English  and  Italian  furniture  bought 
by  a  lady  who  knows  the  real  from  the  false, 
and  has  a  fine  eye  for  the  color  of  her  hangings 
and  her  chintz-covered  chairs.  On  cool  nights 
a  log  fire  burns  in  a  wide  hearth,  and  the  elec- 
tric lamps  are  turned  out  to  show  the  soft  light 
of  tall  fat  candles  in  wrought-iron  torches  each 
side  of  the  hearthstone.  Galli-Curci  sings 
from  a  gramophone  between  Hawaiian  airs  or 
the  latest  ragtime;  or  the  master  of  the  house 
— a  man  of  all  the  talents  and  the  heart  of 
youth — strikes  out  plaintive  little  melodies 
made  up  "out  of  his  own  head,"  as  children 
say,  on  a  rosewood  piano,  while  the  two  chil- 
dren play  "Polly anna"  on  the  carpet,  and 
their  mother  watches  through  half-shut  eyes 
the  picture  she  has  made  of  the  room.  It  is 
a  pretty  picture  of  an  American  interior,  as 
a  painter  might  see  it.  .  .  . 

In  New  York,  as  in  London,  it  is  the  am- 
bition of  many  people,  I  find,  to  seek  out  a 
country  cottage  and  get  back  to  the  "simple 

92 


THINGS  I  LIKE  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES 

life"  for  a  spell.  "A  real  old  place"  is  the 
dream  of  the  American  business  man  who  has 
learned  to  love  ancient  things  after  a  visit 
to  Europe,  or  by  a  sudden  revolt  against 
the  modern  side  of  civilization.  The  "real 
old  place"  is  not  easy  to  find,  but  I  met  one 
couple  who  had  found  it  not  more  than 
thirty  miles  or  so  from  Madison  Square,  yet 
in  such  a  rural  and  unfrequented  spot  that 
it  seemed  a  world  away.  They  had  dis- 
covered an  old  mill-house,  built  more  than  a 
hundred  and  fifty  years  ago,  and  unchanged 
all  that  time  except  by  the  weathering  of  its 
beams  and  panels,  and  the  sinking  of  its 
brick  floors,  and  the  memories  that  are 
stored  up  in  every  crack  and  crevice  of  that 
homestead  where  simple  folk  wed  and  bred, 
worked  and  died,  from  one  generation  to 
another.  The  new  owners  are  simple  folk, 
too,  though  not  of  the  peasant  class,  and 
with  reverence  and  sound  taste  they  decline 
to  allow  any  architect  to  alter  the  old  struc- 
ture of  the  house,  but  keep  it  just  as  it 
stands.  In  their  courtyard,  on  a  Sunday 
afternoon,  were  several  motor-cars,  and  in 
their  parlor  a  party  of  friends  from  New 
York  who  had  come  out  to  this  little  old  mill- 
house  in  the  country,  and  expressed  their 

93 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

ecstasy  at  its  quaint  simplicity.  Some  of 
them  invited  themselves  to  supper,  whereat 
the  lady  of  the  mill-house  laughed  at  them 
and  said,  "I  guess  you'll  have  to  be  content 
with  boiled  beans  and  salad,  because  my 
man  and  I  are  tired  of  the  fatted  calf  and 
all  the  gross  things  of  city  life."  To  her  sur- 
prise there  was  a  chorus  of  "Fine!"  and  the 
daintiest  girl  from  New  York  offered  to  do 
the  washing-up.  Through  an  open  door  in 
the  parlor  there  was  a  pretty  view  of  another 
room  up  a  flight  of  wooden  stairs.  In  such  a 
room  one  might  see  the  buxom  ghost  of 
some  American  Phcebe  of  the  farm,  with 
bare  arms  and  a  low-necked  bodice,  coiling 
her  hair  at  an  old  mirror  for  the  time  when 
John  should  come  a-courting  after  he  had 
brushed  the  straw  from  his  hair.  .  .  . 

I  went  into  another  country  cottage,  as 
old  as  this  one  and  as  simple  as  this.  It 
stands  in  a  meadow  somewhere  in  Sleepy 
Hollow,  low  lying  by  a  little  stream  that 
flows  through  its  garden,  but  within  quick 
reach,  by  a  stiff  climb,  through  silver  beeches 
and  bracken,  and  over  gray  rocks  that  crop 
through  the  soil,  to  hilltops  from  which  one 
gazes  over  the  Hudson  River  and  the  Sound, 
and  a  wide  stretch  of  wooded  country  with 

94 


THINGS  I  LIKE  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES 

little  white  towns  in  the  valleys.  Here  in 
the  cottage  lives  a  New  York  doctor  and  his 
wife,  leading  the  simple  life,  not  as  a  pose, 
but  in  utter  sincerity,  because  they  have 
simplicity  in  their  souls.  Every  morning  the 
doctor  walks  away  from  his  cottage  to  a  rail- 
way which  takes  him  off  to  the  noisy  city, 
and  here  until  five  of  the  evening  he  is  busy 
in  healing  the  sufferers  of  civilization  and 
stupidity — the  people  who  overeat  them- 
selves, the  children  who  are  too  richly  fed  by 
foolish  mothers,  business  men  whose  nerves 
have  broken  down  by  worry  and  work  for 
the  sake  of  ambition,  society  women  wrecked 
in  the  chase  of  pleasure,  and  little  ones, 
rickety,  blind,  or  diseased  because  of  the  sins 
of  their  parents.  The  little  doctor  does  not 
deal  in  medicine  and  does  not  believe  in  it. 
He  treats  his  patients  according  to  his 
philosophy  of  natural  science,  by  which  he 
gives  their  human  nature  a  chance  of  freeing 
itself  from  the  poison  that  has  tainted  it  and 
getting  back  to  normal  self-healing  action. 
He  has  devised  a  machine  for  playing  waves 
of  electricity  through  his  patients  by  means 
of  which  he  breaks  up  the  clogging  tissue  of 
death  in  their  cell  life  and  regenerates  the 
health  of  the  cell  system.     He  has  made 

95 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

some  startling  cures,  and  I  think  the  cheerful 
wisdom  of  the  little  man,  his  simple,  childlike 
heart,  and  the  clean  faith  that  shines  out  of 
his  eyes  areTpart  of  the  secret  of  his  power. 
He  goes  back  to  his  country  cottage  to  tend 
his  flowers  and  to  think  deeper  into  the 
science  of  life  up  there  on  the  hilltop  which 
looks  across  the  Sound  among  the  silvery 
beeches,  where  in  the  spring  there  is  a  carpet 
of  bluebells  and  in  the  autumn  the  fire  of 
red  bracken.  In  spring  and  summer  and 
autumn  he  rises  early  and  plunges  into  a  pool 
behind  the  shelter  of  trees  and  bushes,  and 
before  dressing  runs  up  and  down  a  stone 
pathway  bordered  by  the  flowers  he  has 
grown,  and  after  that  dances  a  little  to  keep 

his  spirit  young I  liked  that  glimpse  I  had 

of  the  American  doctor  in  Sleepy  Hollow. 

And  I  liked  all  the  glimpses  I  had  of  Ameri- 
can home  life  in  the  suburbs  of  New  York 
and  in  other  townships  of  the  United  States. 
I  liked  the  white  woodwork  of  the  houses, 
and  the  bright  sunlight  that  swept  the  sky 
above  them,  and  the  gardens  that  grew 
without  hedges.  I  liked  the  good  nature  of 
the  people,  the  healthiness  of  their  outlook 
on  life,  their  hopefulness  in  the  future,  their 
self-reliance  and  their  sincerity  of  speech.     I 

96 


I    LIKED    THE    GREETING   OF    THE    TRAIN   CONDUCTOR 


THINGS  I  LIKE  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES 

liked  the  children  of  America,  and  the  college 
girls  who  strolled  in  groups-  along  the  lanes, 
and  the  crowds  who  assembled  in  the  morning 
at  the  local  station  to  begin  a  new  day's 
work  or  a  new  day's  shopping  in  the  big  city 
at  their  journey's  end.  They  had  a  keen  and 
vital  look,  and  nodded  to  one  another  in  a 
neighborly  way  as  they  bought  bulky  papers 
from  the  bookstall  and  chewing-gum  from 
the  candy  stall  and  had  their  shoes  shined 
with  one  eye  on  the  ticket  office.  I  liked  the 
greeting  of  the  train  conductor  to  all  those 
people  whose  faces  he  knew  as  familiar 
friends,  and  to  whom  he  passed  the  time  o' 
day  with  a  jesting  word  or  two.  I  liked  the 
social  life  of  the  American  middle  classes, 
because  it  is  based,  for  the  most  part,  on 
honesty,  a  kindly  feeling  toward  mankind, 
and  healthiness  of  mind  and  body.  They 
are  not  out  to  make  trouble  in  the  world,  and 
unless  somebody  asks  for  it  very  badly  they 
are  not  inclined  to  interfere  with  other 
people's  business-.  ^The  thing  I  liked  best  in 
the  United  States  is  the  belief  of  its  citizens 
in  the  progress  of  mankind  toward  higher 
idealsj)f  cojnmon  sense;  and  after  the  mad- 
ness of  a  world  at  war  it  is  good  to  find  such 
faith,  however  difficult  to  believe. 

97 


IV 


America's  new  place  in  the  world 

THE  United  States  of  America  has  a 
new  meaning  in  the  world,  and  has 
entered,  by  no  desire  of  its  own,  into  the 
great  family  of  nations,  as  a  rich  uncle  whose 
authority  and  temper  must  be  respected  by 
those  who  desire  his  influence  in  their  family 
quarrels,  difficulties,  and  conditions  of  life. 
Before  the  war  the  United  States  was  won- 
derfully aloof  from  the  peoples  of  Europe. 
The  three  thousand  miles  of  Atlantic  Ocean 
made  it  seem  enormously  far  away,  and 
quite  beyond  the  orbit  of  those  passionate 
politics  which  stirred  European  communi- 
ties with  Old  World  hatred  and  modern 
rivalries.  It  was  free  from  the  fear  which 
was  at  the  back  of  all  European  diplomacy 
and  international  intrigue — the  fear  of  great 
standing  armies  across  artificial  frontiers, 
the  fear  of  invasion,  the  fear  of  a  modern 
European  war  in  which  nation  against  na- 
tion would  be  at  one  another's  throats,  in  a 


AMERICA'S  NEW  PLACE  IN  THE  WORLD 

wild  struggle  for  self-preservation.  America 
was  still  the  New  World,  far  away,  to  which 
people  went  in  a  spirit  of  adventure,  in 
search  of  fortune  and  liberty.  There  was  a 
chance  of  one,  a  certainty  of  the  other,  and 
it  was  this  certain  gift  which  called  to  multi- 
tudes of  men  and  women — Russians  and 
Russian  Jews,  Poles  and  Polish  Jews,  Czechs, 
and  Bohemians,  and  Germans  of  all  kinds — 
to  escape  from  the  bondage  which  cramped 
their  souls  under  the  oppression  of  their  own 
governments,  and  to  gain  the  freedom  of  the 
Stars  and  Stripes.  To  the  popular  imagina- 
tion of  Europe,  America  was  the  world's 
democratic  paradise,  where  every  man  had 
equal  opportunity  and  rights,  a  living  wage 
with  a  fair  margin  and  the  possibility  of 
enormous  luck.  A  steady  stream  of  youth 
flowed  out  from  Ireland  to  New  York,  year 
after  year,  and  Irish  peasants  left  behind  in 
their  hovels  heard  of  great  doings  by  Pat 
and  Mick,  who  had  become  the  gentlemen 
entirely  out  there  in  the  States,  and  of  Kath- 
leen and  Biddy,  who  were  piling  up  the  dol- 
lars so  fast  that  they  could  send  some  back 
to  the  old  people  and  not  feel  the  loss  of  them 
at  all,  at  all. 

The  internal  resources  of  America  were  so 

99 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

vast  and  the  development  of  their  own  states 
so  absorbed  the  energies  of  the  people  that 
there  was  no  need  of  international  diplomacy 
and  intrigue  to  capture  new  markets  of  the 
world  or  to  gain  new  territory  for  the  pos- 
session of  raw  material.  The  United  States 
was  self-centered  and  self-sufficient,  and  the 
spirit  of  the  Monroe  Doctrine  prohibiting 
foreign  powers  from  any  colonizing  within 
the  boundaries  of  the  Republic  was  developed 
in  popular  imagination  and  tradition  to  a 
firm  policy  of  self-isolation  and  of  non-inter- 
ference by  others.  The  American  people 
had  no  interest,  politically,  in  the  govern- 
ments or  affairs  of  other  nations,  and  they 
desired  to  be  left  alone,  with  a  "Hands  off!" 
their  own  sovereign  power.  It  was  this 
reality  of  isolation  which  gave  America  im- 
mense advantages  as  a  republic  and  had  a 
profound  influence  upon  the  psychology  of 
her  citizens.  Being  aloof  from  the  tradi- 
tions of  European  peoples  and  from  their 
political  entanglements  and  interdependence, 
the  United  States  could  adopt  a  clear  and 
straightforward  policy  of  self-development 
on  industrial  lines.  Her  diplomacy  was  as 
simple  as  a  child's  copy-book  maxim.     Her 

ambassadors    and    ministers    at    European 

100 


AMERICA'S  NEW  PLACE  IN  rME  WORLD 

courts  had  no  need  of  casufetfy  or  'Machia- 
vellian subtlety.  They  had  an  exceedingly 
interesting  and  pleasant  time  reporting  back 
the  absurdities  of  European  embassies,  the 
melodrama  of  European  rivalries,  the  back- 
stairs influence  at  work  in  secret  treaties,  the 
assassinations,  riots,  revolutions,  and  po- 
litical crises  which  from  time  to  time  con- 
vulsed various  countries — and  the  corrupt 
bargainings  and  jugglings  between  small 
powers  and  great  powers.  The  American 
representatives  in  Europe  watched  all  this  as 
the  greatest  game  on  earth,  but  far  away 
from  the  United  States,  and  without  the 
slightest  effect  upon  the  destiny  of  their  own 
country,  except  when  it  excited  Wall  Street 
gamblers.  American  diplomats  were  not 
weighted  down  by  the  fear  of  offending  the 
susceptibilities  of  Germany  or  France  or 
Italy  or  Russia,  nor  were  they  asked  to  play 
off  one  country  against  another,  in  order  to 
maintain  that  delicate  and  evil  mechanism 
known  as  "the  balance  of  power" — the 
uniting  of  armed  bands  for  self-defense  or 
the  means  of  aggression.  The  frontiers  of 
America  were  inviolate  and  the  Atlantic  and 
Pacific  seaboards  were  not  open  to  sudden 
attack,  like  the  boundaries  between  Germany 


101 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 


and  France,  Turkey  and  Bulgaria,  Italy  and 
Austria,  where  fear  of  invasion  was  the  under- 
current of  all  political  and  popular  thought, 
and  the  motive  power  of  all  national  energy, 
to  the  detriment  of  social  progress,  because 
of  the  crippling  cost  of  standing  armies  and 
unproductive  labor  for  the  material  of  war. 
Nationally,  therefore,  the  United  States  of 
America  was  in  supreme  luck  because  it 
could  use  its  youth  and  resources  with  full 
advantage,  free  from  menace  and  beyond 
all  rivalry. 

The  character  of  the  people  responded  to 
this  independence  of  the  Republic.  The 
average  American  citizen,  as  far  as  I  knew 
him,  in  Europe  before  the  war,  had  an  amused 
contempt  for  many  institutions  and  social 
ideas  which  he  observed  in  a  continental 
tour.  He  was  able  to  regard  the  hotchpotch 
of  European  nationalities  and  traditions  from 
an  aloof  and  judicial  viewpoint.  They  seemed 
to  him  on  the  whole  very  silly.  He  could  not 
understand  why  an  invisible  line  on  a  road 
should  make  people  on  each  side  of  the  line 
hate  each  other  desperately.  He  watched 
the  march  past  of  troops  in  France  or  Ger- 
many, the  saluting  of  generals,  the  clicking 
of  heels,  the  brilliant  uniforms  of  officers,  as 

102 


AMERICA'S  NEW  PLACE  IN  THE  WORLD 

a  pageant  which  was  utterly  out  of  date  in 
its  application  to  life,  and  as  a  degradation  of 
individual  dignity.  He  did  not  link  up  the 
thriftiness  of  the  French  peasant — the  des- 
perate hoarding  of  his  petit  sou — with  the  old 
fear  of  invasion  by  German  legions  across  the 
frontier,  when  the  peasant  might  see  his 
little  farm  in  flames  and  his  harvest  trampled 
down  by  soldiers'  boots.  The  American  vis- 
itor observed  the  fuss  made  when  one  king 
visited  another,  and  read  the  false  adulation 
of  the  royal  visitor,  the  insincere  speeches  at 
royal  banquets,  the  list  of  decorations  con- 
ferred upon  court  flunkies,  and  laughed  at 
the  whole  absurdity,  not  seeing  that  it  was 
all  part  of  a  bid  for  a  new  alliance  or  a  bribe 
for  peace,  or  a  mask  of  fear,  until  the  time 
came  when  all  bids  and  bribes  should  be  of 
no  more  avail,  and  the  only  masks  worn 
were  to  be  gas-masks,  when  the  rival  nations 
should  hack  at  one  another  in  a  frenzy  of 
slaughter.  The  American  in  Europe  who 
came  to  have  a  look  'round  was  astonished 
at  the  old-fashioned  ways  of  people — their 
subservience  to  "caste"  ideas,  their  alle- 
giance to  the  divine  right  of  kings,  as  to  the 
"Little  Father"  of  the  Russian  people,  and 
the  "shining  armor"  of  the  German  Kaiser, 

8  103 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

and  their  apparent  contentment  with  the 
wide  gulf  between  underpaid  labor  and 
privileged  capital.  He  did  not  realize  that 
his  own  liberty  of  ideas  and  high  rate  of 
wage-earning  were  due  to  citizenship  in  a 
country  free  from  militarism  and  its  crushing 
taxation,  and  free  also  from  hereditary  cus- 
toms upheld  by  the  power  of  the  sword  used 
in  civil  strife  as  well  as  in  international  con- 
flict, by  the  imperial  governments  of  Russia, 
Germany,  and  other  powers  whose  social 
philosophy  was  no  different,  though  less 
tyrannical  in  expression.  The  American  said, 
"I  like  Europe  as  a  peep-show,  and  it's  a 
good  place  to  spend  money  in;  but  we  can 
teach  you  a  few  things  in  the  United  States; 
one  of  them  is  equality,  and  another  is  oppor- 
tunity." He  was  right,  and  it  was  his  luck. 
Because  of  those  privileges  many  pilgrims 
of  fortune  went  to  America  from  all  the 
countries  of  Europe,  in  a  great  tide  of  emi- 
gration, adopting  American  citizenship  in 
most  cases  soon  after  sighting  the  Statue  of 
Liberty — "old  Lib.,"  as  I  heard  her  called. 
The  United  States  received  these  foreigners 
in  hundreds  of  thousands  and  became  "the 
melting-pot"  of  races.  The  melting  proc- 
ess,   however,    was    not    so  rapid  as  some 

104 


AMERICA'S  NEW  PLACE  IN  THE  WORLD 

people  imagined,  and  it  was  something  of  a 
shock  to  the  States  to  discover  a  few  years 
before  the  war,  and  with  a  deeper  realization 
at  the  outbreak  of  war,  that  they  had  within 
their  boundaries  enormous  populations  of 
foreign-born  citizens,  Germans,  Poles,  Slavs 
of  all  kinds,  Italians,  and  Austrians,  who  had 
not  assimilated  American  ideas,  but  kept 
their  speech,  customs,  and  national  senti- 
ment. It  was  the  vast  foreign  element  which 
had  to  be  converted  to  the  American  out- 
look upon  the  world  tragedy  which  opened 
in  August,  1914.  This  mass  of  hostile  or 
unwilling  people  had  to  be  dragged  into  ac- 
tion when  America  found  that  her  isolation 
was  broken,  that  she  could  no  longer  stand 
aloof  from  the  rest  of  mankind,  nor  be 
indifferent  to  the  fate  of  friendly  nations 
menaced  with  destruction,  nor  endure  a 
series  of  outrages  which  flouted  her  own 
power,  nor  risk  the  world  supremacy  of  a 
military  autocracy  which,  if  triumphant  in 
Europe,  would  very  soon  dictate  to  the 
United  States.  It  is  the  miracle  of  the  Stars 
and  Stripes  that  when  the  American  govern- 
ment conscripted  all  able-bodied  youth  and 
raised  a  vast  and  well-trained  army,  and  sent 
it    into    the    battlefields    of    France    and 

105 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

Flanders,  there  was  no  civil  outbreak  among 
those  foreign-born  citizens,  and  with  abso- 
lute obedience  they  took  their  places  in  the 
ranks,  Germans  to  fight  against  their  own 
flesh  and  blood,  because  of  allegiance  to  a 
state  which  had  given  them  liberty,  pro- 
vided they  defended  the  ideals  which  be- 
longed to  the  state — in  this  case  the  hardest 
test  of  loyalty,  not  without  tragedy  and 
agony  and  fear. 

For  the  first  time  there  was  no  liberty  in 
the  United  States — no  liberty  of  private 
judgment,  no  liberty  of  action,  no  liberty  of 
speech.  The  state  ruled  with  complete  des- 
potism over  the  lives  of  its  citizens,  not 
tolerating  any  infringements  of  its  orders, 
because  the  safety  of  the  state  would  be 
endangered  unless  victory  were  assured. 
That  was  an  enormous  shock,  I  am  sure,  to 
the  psychology  of  all  Americans,  even  to 
those  most  loyal  to  the  state  authority,  and 
it  has  caused  an  entire  change  in  the  mental 
attitude  of  all  American  citizens  toward  the 
conditions  and  relationships  of  life,  because 
that  sense  of  utter  liberty  they  had  before 
the  war  is  limited  now  by  the  knowledge 
that  at  any  time  the  Republic  of  which  they 
are  citizens  may  call  upon  them  for  life  itself 

106 


AMERICA'S  NEW  PLACE  IN  THE  WORLD 

and  for  all  service  up  to  that  of  death,  and 
that,  whatever  their  ideas  should  be,  they 
may  not  refuse.  In  that  way  they  have  no 
longer  an  advantage  over  Frenchmen,  or 
Germans,  or  Russians,  or  Italians,  whom 
they  pitied  as  men  without  liberty  of  souls 
or  bodies.  That  is  to  say,  they  have  to 
make  surrender  to  the  state  of  all  things  in 
the  last  resort,  which  is  war — a  law  which 
many  European  peoples  learned  to  their  cost, 
many  times  before,  and  which  America 
learned  once  in  her  own  Civil  War,  but 
thought  she  could  forget  with  other  painful 
old  things  in  the  lumber-room  of  history. 

The  people  of  the  United  States  have 
learned  many  other  things  during  the  last 
few  years,  when  all  the  world  has  changed, 
and  they  stand  now  at  the  parting  of  the 
ways,  looking  back  on  the  things  they  knew 
which  they  will  never  see  again,  and  looking 
forward  to  the  future,  which  is  still  doubtful 
to  them  in  its  destiny.  I  went  to  them  on  a 
visit  during  the  period  between  armistice 
and  peace,  when  mentally,  I  think,  they 
were  in  a  transition  stage,  very  conscious  of 
this  place  at  the  crossroads,  and  filled  with 
grave  anxiety,  in  spite  of  exultation  at  the 
power  of  their  armies  and  the  valor  of  their 

107 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

men  who  had  helped  to  gain  stupendous 
victory. 

The  things  that  had  happened  within  the 
United  States  before  and  after  its  declara- 
tion of  war  had  stirred  them  with  passionate 
and  complicated  emotions.  From  the  very 
outset  of  the  Great  War,  long  before  the 
United  States  was  directly  involved,  large 
numbers  of  Americans  of  the  old  stock,  born 
of  English,  Irish,  Scottish,  or  Dutch  ances- 
try, were  neutral  only  by  order  and  not  at 
all  in  spirit.  Their  sentiment  toward  France, 
based  on  the  Lafayette  tradition  and  their 
love  of  Paris  and  of  French  literature  and 
wit,  made  them  hate  the  invasion  of  northern 
France  and  eager  to  act  as  champions  of  the 
French  people.  Their  old  ties  with  England, 
the  bond  of  speech  and  of  blood,  made  them 
put  aside  any  minor  antagonisms  which 
they  had  felt  on  account  of  old  prejudice, 
and  they  followed  with  deep  sympathy  and 
anxiety  the  progress  of  the  heroic  struggle  of 
British  armies  in  the  slaughter-fields.  They 
were  impatient  for  America  to  get  into  the 
conflict  against  German  aggression.  As  the 
Germans  became  more  ruthless  of  humane 
laws,  more  desperate  in  their  attacks  upon 
non-combatant  as  well  as  military  popula- 

108 


AMERICA'S  NEW  PLACE  IN  THE  WORLD 

tions  by  sea  and  air  and  land,  these  Ameri- 
cans became  sick  and  fevered  at  the  thought 
of  their  own  neutrality,  and  supported 
Colonel  Roosevelt  in  his  driving  influence  to 
get  the  United  States  into  the  war.  They 
became  more  and  more  embittered  with 
President  Wilson,  who  adopted  an  academic 
view  of  the  jungle  scenes  in  Europe,  disso- 
ciated the  German  people  from  the  crimes  of 
their  war  lords,  and  expounded  a  Christian 
philosophy  of  world  politics  which  seemed 
like  cowardice  and  humiliation  of  American 
pride  to  people  stung  to  fury  by  German 
insults  and  outrages.  These  thoughts  were 
beginning  to  seethe  like  yeast  throughout 
masses  of  American  people,  especially  in  the 
East,  but  took  a  long  time  to  reach  and  stir 
the  great  West  and  were  resisted  by  the 
mentality  of  foreign-born  populations,  in- 
cluding the  Jewish  communities  and  the 
Irish.  They  were  averse  to  war,  and  took  a 
detached  view  of  the  struggle  in  Europe, 
which  seemed  to  them  too  far  away  to  matter 
to  America.  The  German  populations  had  a 
natural  sympathy  for  their  own  race,  much 
as  some  of  them  detested  its  militaristic 
ideals.  There  were,  I  imagine,  also  many 
intellectual  men,  not  dragged  down  by  the 

109 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

apathy  of  the  masses,  to  whom  "the  war" 
seemed  of  less  importance  to  the  United 
States  than  the  condition  of  the  crops  or  the 
local  baseball  match.  They  felt  that  Presi- 
dent Wilson's  hesitations,  long-drawn-out 
notes,  and  exalted  pacifism  were  on  nobler 
lines  of  thought  than  the  loud-mouthed 
jingoism  and  bloodthirsty  howlings  of  low- 
class  newspapers  and  speakers. 

The  Lusitania  was  sunk,  and  a  cry  of 
agony  and  wrath  went  up  from  many  hearts 
in  the  world  at  this  new  phase  of  war;  but 
still  the  United  States  stayed  out;  and  many 
Americans  lowered  their  heads  with  shame 
and  had  a  fire  of  indignation  in  their  hearts 
because  their  President  still  temporized. 
They  believed  that  the  American  people 
would  have  rallied  to  him  as  one  man  had  he 
made  that  outrage  the  signal  of  war.  They 
had  no  patience  with  his  careful  letter- 
writing,  his  anxiety  to  act  as  a  moral  mentor 
instead  of  as  a  leader  of  great  armies  in  a 
fight  against  world  criminals.  ...  At  last 
Wilson  was  forced  to  act,  even  his  caution 
being  overmastered  by  the  urgent  necessity 
of  intervention  on  behalf  of  Great  Britain 
and  France  and  Belgium,  panting  and  bleed- 
ing from  every  pore  after  three  years  of 

no 


AMERICA'S  NEW  PLACE  IN  THE  WORLD 

struggle;  even  his  philosophy  of  aloofness 
being  borne  down  by  acts  of  war  which 
wounded  American  interests  and  threatened 
American  security.  So  the  United  States 
declared  war,  gathered  its  youth  into  great 
training-camps,  and  launched  into  the  world 
struggle  with  slow  but  ever-increasing  energy 
which  swept  the  people  with  a  mighty  whirl- 
wind of  emotion. 

The  American  people  as  a  wThole  did  truly 
enter  into  war  in  the  spirit  of  crusaders. 
They  sent  out  their  sons  as  rescuers  of 
stricken  peoples  fighting  desperately  against 
criminal  powers.  They  had  no  selfish  in- 
terests behind  their  sacrifice,  and  they  did 
not  understand  that  defeat  of  the  nations 
allied  against  Germany  would  inevitably 
menace  them  with  dire  perils  to  their  sover- 
eign power,  to  their  commercial  prosperity, 
and  to  their  ideals  of  civilization.  Those 
things  were  true,  but  it  wras  not  because  of 
them  that  the  people  of  the  United  States 
were  uplifted  by  a  wonderful  exaltation  and 
that  they  put  their  full  strength  into  pre- 
paring themselves  for  a  long  and  bloody  war. 
Every  little  home  was  turned  into  a  Red 
Cross  factory.  Every  young  man  of  pluck 
and  pride  was  eager  to  get  the  first  call  for 

111 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

active  service  in  the  field.  Girls  took  on 
men's  jobs,  old  ladies  knitted  until  their  eyes 
were  dim.  Hard  business  men  gave  away 
their  dollars  in  bundles,  denied  themselves 
at  meal-time  so  that  Europe  should  be  fed, 
tried  by  some  little  sacrifice  to  share  the 
spirit  of  those  who  made  offer  of  their  lives. 
The  materialism  of  which  America  had  been 
accused,  not  unjustly,  was  broken  through 
by  a  spiritual  idealism  which  touched  every 
class,  and  Americans  did  not  shrink  from 
sacrifice,  but  asked  for  it  as  a  privilege,  and 
were  regretful  that  as  a  people  they  suffered 
so  little  in  comparison  with  those  who  had 
fought  and  agonized  so  long.  .  .  . 

All  this  I  heard  when  I  went  to  America 
in  the  spring,  between  armistice  and  peace, 
and  with  my  own  eyes  and  ears  I  saw  and 
heard  the  proof  of  it.  Down  Fifth  Avenue  I 
saw  the  march  past  of  troops  whom  I  had 
seen  before  marching  along  the  roads  of  war 
to  Ypres  and  Amiens,  when  the  British  army 
was  hard  pressed  and  glad  to  see  these  new- 
comers. In  New  York  clubs  I  met  young 
American  officers  who  had  been  training  with 
British  staffs  and  battalions  before  they 
fought    alongside    British    troops.     And    in 

American  homes  I  met  women  who  were  still 

112 


AMERICA'S  NEW  PLACE  IN  THE  WORLD 

waiting  for  their  men  whom  they  had  sent 
away  with  brave  faces,  hiding  the  fear  in 
their  hearts,  and  now  knew,  with  thankful- 
ness, that  they  were  safe.  Victory  had  come 
quickly  after  the  entry  of  the  'American 
troops,  but  it  was  only  the  low  braggart  who 
said,  "We  won  the  war — arid  taught  the 
English  how  to  fight."  The  main  body  of 
educated  people  whom  I  met  in  many  Ameri- 
can cities  said,  rather:  "We  were  the  last 
straw  that  broke  the  camel's  back.  We 
were  glad  to  share  the  victory,  but  we  did 
not  suffer  enough.  Wre  came  in  too  late  to 
take  our  full  share  of  sacrifice." 

At  that  time,  after  the  armistice  and  when 
Mr.  Wilson  was  in  Europe  at  the  Peace  Con- 
ference, the  people  I  met  were  not  so  much 
buoyed  up  with  the  sense  of  victory  as  per- 
plexed and  anxious  about  the  new  respon- 
sibilities which  they  would  be  asked  to  ful- 
fill. A  tremendous  controversy  raged  round 
the  President,  who  baffled  them  by  his  acts 
and  speeches  and  silences.  When  in  an 
article  which  I  wrote  soon  after  my  landing  I 
said  I  was  "all  for  Wilson"  I  received  an 
immense  number  of  letters  "putting  me 
wise"  as  to  the  failure  of  the  President  to 
gain  the  confidence  of  the  American  people 

113 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

and  their  grievous  apprehensions  that  he 
was,  out  of  personal  vanity  and  with  a  stub- 
born, autocratic  spirit,  bartering  away  the 
rights  and  liberties  of  the  United  States, 
without  the  knowledge  or  support  of  the 
people,  and  involving  them  in  European  en- 
tanglements which  they  were  not  prepared 
to  accept.  This  antagonism  to  the  President 
was  summed  up  clearly  enough  in  some  such 
words  as  those  that  follow: 

Taf t  and  Roosevelt  quarreled ;  Wilson  was  born  of  it. 
Wilson  is  all  there  is  to  the  Democratic  party.  He 
has  had  to  dominate  it;  the  brain  of  America  is  in  the 
Republican  camp.  He  refused  to  use  this  material 
when  offered  for  the  war.  He  would  not  allow  Roose- 
velt to  go  to  France  and  fight;  he  would  not  use 
General  Wood,  who  was  the  "Lord  Bobs"  of  this 
country  in  regard  to  preparedness.  For  the  winning 
of  the  war  we  put  party  aside  and  the  Congress  gave 
Wilson  unlimited  power.  (Lincoln  put  party  aside 
and  used  the  best  he  could  get.)  Now  Mr.  Wilson 
asks  and  gets  very  little  advice.  When  he  has  a 
difficult  question  he  secludes  himself,  except  for 
Colonel  House — and  we  know  nothing  about  Colonel 
House.  Mr.  Wilson  dominated  America  and  no  one 
objected;  the  war  was  being  won.  In  the  fall  he 
saw,  of  course,  victory,  and  was  planning  his  trip 
abroad.  He  boldly  asked  for  a  Democratic  Senate, 
which  would  give  him  control  of  the  treaty-making 
power.  He  said,  practically:  "Everybody  shows 
himself  bigger  than  party.  I  will,  too.  All  together 
now!     But  you  prove  it  and  give  me  a  party  Senate, 

114 


AMERICA'S  NEW  PLACE  IN  THE  WORLD 

not  a  Senate  picked  from  the  best  brains  of  this 
America,  but  a  Democratic  Senate,  so  that  I  can  have 
full  power  in  the  Peace  Conference."  The  laugh 
that  went  up  must  have  hit  the  stars,  and  we  almost 
forgot  the  war  to  watch  the  election.  Can  you 
imagine  Roosevelt  in  New  York  in  this  crisis?  He 
held  a  monster  meeting  and  said  what  he  thought, 
through  his  teeth.  "Unconditional  surrender  for 
Germany,  no  matter  what  it  costs"  (not  idle  words — 
Quentin's  death  in  France  had  cost  Roosevelt  his 
famous  boyishness  of  spirit),  "and  a  Senate  that  will 
curb  autocratic  power  in  America."  Then  he  told 
his  hearers  that  they  would  not  need  a  key  to  under- 
stand his  speech.  Now,  power  goes  to  people's 
heads.  Mr.  Wilson  had  changed.  Time  and  again 
opposition  in  Congress  failed.  You  would  hear, 
"Wilson  always  wins."  Always  a  dominating  figure, 
he  grew  defiant,  a  trifle  ruthless,  heady.  The  Ameri- 
can answer  to  Wilson  was  a  Republican  Senate,  and 
the  Senators  were  put  there  to  balance  him.  When 
he  decided  to  go  to  Europe  he  simply  said  he  was 
going.  He  did  not  ask  our  approval,  nor  find  out 
our  wishes,  nor  even  tell  us  what  he  was  going  to  say, 
but  did  take  over  the  cables  and  put  them  under 
government  control.  He  made  himself  so  inacces- 
sible at  that  time  that  no  one  could  get  his  ear.  On 
his  flying  visit  to  New  York  he  said  that  he  returned 
to  France  to  tell  them  that  we  backed  him.  Is  that 
true?  We  don't  know  what  we  think  yet.  We 
haven't  made  up  our  minds.  We  will  back  him  when 
he  is  frank  and  when  we  are  convinced.  We  can't 
sign  our  souls  away,  all  our  wonderful  heritages, 
without  knowing  all  about  it.  ...  If  we  join  a  League 
of  Nations,  shall  we  prevent  war?  Or,  if  we  join, 
shall  we  be  absorbed  and  make  the  fight  a  bigger 
one? 

115 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

This,  I  believe,  is  a  fair  statement  of  the 
views  held  by  many  educated  people  in  the 
United  States  at  the  time  between  armistice 
and  peace.  I  heard  just  such  words  in  the 
City  Club  of  New  York,  in  the  Union  League 
Club,  from  people  in  Boston  and  Philadel- 
phia and  Washington,  and  at  many  dinner- 
tables  where,  after  the  preliminary  courtesies 
of  conversation,  there  was  a  quick  clash  of 
opinion  among  the  guests,  husbands  differing 
from  wives,  brothers  from  sisters,  and  friends 
from  friends,  over  the  personality  and  pur- 
pose of  the  President,  and  the  practical 
possibilities  of  a  League  of  Nations.  The  de- 
fenders of  the  President  waived  aside  all  per- 
sonal issues  and  supported  him  ardently  be- 
cause they  believed  that  it  was  only  by  the 
application  of  his  ideals,  modified,  no  doubt, 
by  contact  with  the  actual  problems  of 
European  states,  that  a  new  war  more 
devastating  to  the  world  than  the  one  just 
past  could  be  prevented,  and  that  his  obsti- 
nacy and  singleness  of  purpose  on  behalf  of  a 
League  of  Nations  pointed  him  out  as  the 
Man  of  Destiny  who  would  lead  humanity 
out  of  the  jungle  to  a  higher  plane  of  civilized 
philosophy. 

That  was  my  own  view  of  his  mission  and 

116 


AMERICA'S  NEW  PLACE  IN  THE  WORLD 

character,  though  now  I  think  he  failed  at 
the  Peace  Conference  in  carrying  out  the 
principles  of  his  own  Fourteen  Points,  and 
weakened  under  the  pressure  of  the  govern- 
ing powers  of  France,  Belgium,  and  England, 
who  desired  revenge  as  well  as  reparation, 
and  the  death  of  German  militarism  under 
the  heel  of  an  Allied  militarism  based  on  the 
old  German  philosophy  of  might.  The  Presi- 
dent failed  largely  because  he  insisted  upon 
playing  "a  lone  hand,"  and  did  not  have  the 
confidence  of  his  country  behind  him,  nor  its 
understanding  of  his  purpose,  while  he  him- 
self wavered  in  his  principles. 

America,  during  the  time  of  my  visit,  was 
afraid  of  taking  too  strong  a  lead  in  the  re- 
settlement of  Europe.  So  far  from  wishing 
to  ""boss  the  show,"  as  some  people  sus- 
pected, most  Americans  had  an  unnatural 
timidity,  and  one  count  of  their  charge 
against  Wilson  was  his  obstinacy  in  his  deal- 
ings with  Lloyd  George  and  Clemenceau. 
It  was  a  consciousness  of  ignorance  about 
European  problems  which  made  the  Ameri- 
cans draw  back  from  strong  decisions,  and 
above  all  it  was  the  fear  of  being  "dragged 
in"  to  new  wars,  not  of  their  concern,  which 
made  them  deeply  suspicious  of  the  League 

117 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

of  Nations.  In  many  conversations  I  found 
this  fear  the  dominant  thought.  "If  you 
people  want  to  fight  each  other  again, 
you  will  have  to  do  without  us,"  said 
American  soldiers  just  back  from  the  front. 
"No  more  crusades  for  us!"  said  others. 
"American  isolation — and  a  plague  on  all 
your  little  nations!"  said  civilians  as  well  as 
soldiers.  Bitter  memories  of  French  "econ- 
omy" spoiled  for  American  soldiers  the  ro- 
mance of  the  Lafayette  tradition.  "I  lost 
my  leg,"  said  one  man,  "for  a  country  which 
charged  for  the  trenches  where  we  fought, 
and  for  people  who  put  up  their  prices  three 
hundred  per  cent,  when  the  American  armies 
came  to  rescue  them.  France  can  go  to  hell 
as  far  as  I'm  concerned."  .  .  .  Nevertheless,  it 
became  more  clear  to  thinking  minds  in 
America  that  the  days  of  "isolation"  were 
gone,  and  that  for  good  or  evil  the  United 
States  is  linked  up  by  unbreakable  bonds  of 
interest  and  responsibility  with  other  great 
powers  of  the  world.  Never  again  can  she 
be  indifferent  to  their  fate.  If  another  great 
convulsion  happens  in  Europe,  American 
troops  will  again  be  there,  quicker  than 
before,  because  her  action  in  the  last  war  and 
her  share  of  the  terms  of  peace  have  made  her 

118 


AMERICA'S  NEW  PLACE  IN  THE  WORLD 

responsible  in  honor  for  the  safety  of  certain 
peoples  and  the  upholding  of  certain  agree- 
ments. The  Atlantic  has  shrunk  in  size  to 
a  narrow  strip  of  water  and  the  sky  is  a  cor- 
ridor which  will  be  quickly  traversed  by  air- 
craft before  the  next  great  war.  But  these 
physical  conditions  which  are  changing  by 
mechanical  development,  altering  the  time- 
tables of  traffic,  are  of  no  account  compared 
with  the  vast  change  that  happened  in  the 
world  when  the  Stars  and  Stripes  fluttered  in 
the  fields  of  France  and  Flanders,  when  the 
bodies  of  America's  heroic  youth  were  laid 
to  rest  there  under  little  white  crosses,  and 
when  the  United  States  of  America  entered 
into  an  intimate  and  enduring  relationship 
with  Great  Britain  and  France. 

The  effect  of  this  change  is  not  yet  appar- 
ent in  its  fullness.  America  is  still  in  a  state 
of  transition,  watching,  studying,  thinking, 
feeling,  and  talking  herself  into  convictions 
which  will  alter  the  fate  of  the  world.  I  be- 
lieve with  all  my  heart  and  soul  that  Amer- 
ica's closer  relationship  with  Europe  will  be 
all  the  better  for  Europe.  I  believe  that  the 
spirit  of  the  American  people  is  essentially 
and  unalterably  democratic,  and  that  as  far 
as  their  power  goes  it  will  be  used  against  the 

9  119 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

tyranny  of  military  castes  and  attempted  op- 
pression of  peoples.  I  believe  that  the  in- 
fluence of  this  spirit,  visible  to  me  in  many 
people  I  met,  will  be  of  enormous  benefit  to 
England  and  France,  because  it  will  be  used 
as  an  arbitrating  factor  in  the  conflict  which 
is  bound  to  come  in  both  those  countries 
between  the  old  regime  and  the  new.  The 
influence  of  America  will  be  the  determining 
power  in  the  settlement  of  Ireland  on  a  basis 
of  common  sense  free  from  the  silly  old 
fetishes  of  historical  enmities  on  both  sides. 
It  will  intervene  to  give  a  chance  of  life  to 
the  German  race  after  they  have  paid  the 
forfeit  for  their  guilt  in  the  last  war,  and  will, 
I  am  certain,  react  against  the  stupid  philos- 
ophy of  enduring  vengeance  with  its  desire 
to  make  a  slave-state  in  Central  Europe, 
which  still  animates  bloody-minded  men  and 
women  so  passionate  of  revenge  that  they 
are  kindling  the  fires  of  another  terrible  and 
devastating  war.  The  United  States  of 
America  is  bound  up  with  the  fate  of  Eu- 
rope, but  its  people  will  still  remain  rather 
aloof  in  mentality  from  the  passions  of 
European  nations,  and  will  be  more  judicial 
in  their  judgment  because  of  that.  In- 
stinctively, rather  than  intellectually,  Amer- 

120 


AMERICA'S  NEW  PLACE  IN  THE  WORLD 

icans  will  act  in  behalf  of  democratic  rights 
against  autocratic  plots.  They  will  not 
allow  the  Russian  people  to  be  hounded  back 
to  the  heels  of  grand  dukes  and  under  the 
lash  of  the  knout.  They  will  give  their  sup- 
port to  the  League  of  Nations  not  as  a  ma- 
chinery to  stifle  popular  progress  by  a  com- 
bination of  governments,  but  as  a  court  for 
the  reform  of  international  laws  and  the 
safeguarding  of  liberty.  Europe  will  not  be 
able  to  ignore  the  judgment  of  America. 
That  country  is,  as  I  said,  the  rich  uncle 
whose  temper  they  must  consult  because  of 
gratitude  for  favors  to  come — and  because 
of  wealth  and  power  in  the  world's  markets. 
America  is  at  the  threshold  of  her  supreme 
destiny  in  the  world.  By  her  action  in  the 
war,  when  for  the  first  time  her  strength  was 
revealed  as  a  mighty  nation,  full  grown  and 
conscious  of  power,  she  has  attained  the 
highest  place  among  the  peoples,  and  her  will 
shall  prevail  if  it  is  based  upon  justice  and 
liberty.  I  believe  that  America's  destiny 
will  be  glorious  for  mankind,  not  because  I 
think  that  the  individual  American  is  a 
better,  nobler,  more  spiritual  being  than  the 
individual  Englishman,  Frenchman,  or  Rus- 
sian, but  because  I  see,  or  think  I  see,  that 

121 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

this  great  country  is  inspired  more  than  any 
other  nation  among  the  big  powers  by  the 
united,  organized  qualities  of  simple,  com- 
monplace people,  with  kindness  of  heart, 
independence  of  spirit,  and  sincerity  of 
ideas,  free  from  the  old  heritage  of  caste, 
snobbishness,  militarism,  and  fetish-worship 
which  still  lingers  among  the  Junkers  of 
Europe.  They  are  a  middle-class  empire, 
untainted  by  imperial  ambition  or  ancient 
traditions  of  overlordship.  They  are  gov- 
erned by  middle-class  sentiment.  They  put 
all  problems  of  life  to  the  test  of  that  sim- 
plicity which  is  found  in  middle-class  homes, 
where  neither  anarchy  is  welcome  nor  aristo- 
cratic privilege.  America  is  the  empire  of 
the  wage-earner,  where  even  her  plutocrats 
have  but  little  power  over  the  independence 
of  the  people.  It  is  a  nation  of  nobodies 
great  with  the  power  of  the  common  man 
and  the  plain  sense  that  governs  his  way  of 
life.  Other  nations  are  still  ruled  by  their 
"somebodies" — by  their  pomposities  and 
High  Panjandrums.  But  it  is  the  nobodies 
whose  turn  is  coming  in  history,  and  America 
is  on  their  side.  In  that  great  federation  of 
United  States  I  saw,  even  in  a  brief  visit, 
possible  dangers  that  may  spoil  America's 

122 


AMERICA'S  NEW  PLACE  IN  THE  WORLD 

chance.  I  saw  a  luxury  of  wealth  in  New 
York  and  other  cities  which  may  be  a  vicious 
canker  in  the  soul  of  the  people.  I  saw  a 
sullen  discontent  among  wage-earners  and 
home-coming  soldiers  because  too  many 
people  had  an  unfair  share  of  wealth.  I  met 
American  Junkers  who  would  use  the  mili- 
tary possibilities  of  the  greatest  army  in  the 
world  for  imperialistic  adventures  and  world 
dominance.  I  heard  of  anarchy  being  whis- 
pered among  foreign-born  masses  in  Ajneri- 
can  cities  and  passed  over  to  other  laborers 
not  of  foreign  origin.  In  the  censorship  of 
news  I  saw  the  first  and  most  ominous  sign 
of  government  autocracy  desiring  to  work 
its  will  upon  the  people  by  keeping  them  in 
ignorance  and  warping  their  opinions;  and 
now  and  then  I  was  conscious  of  an  intoler- 
ance of  free  thought  which  happened  to 
conflict  with  popular  sentiment,  as  ruthless 
as  in  Russia  during  Czardom.  I  saw  hatred 
based  on  ignorance  and  the  brute  spirit  of 
men  inflamed  by  war.  But  these  were  only 
accidental  things,  to  be  found  wherever  hu- 
manity is  crowded,  and  after  my  visit  to 
America  I  came  away  with  memories,  which 
are  still  strong  in  my  heart,  of  a  people  filled 
with  vital  energy,  kind  in  heart,  sincere  and 

123 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

simple  in  their  ways  of  thought  and  speech, 
idealistic  in  emotion,  practical  in  conduct, 
and  democratic  by  faith  and  upbringing. 
The  soil  of  America  is  clean  and  strong  and 
free;  and  the  power  that  comes  out  of  it  will, 
I  think  and  hope  and  pray,  be  used  to  gain 
the  liberties  of  other  nations,  and  to  help  for- 
ward the  welfare  of  the  human  family. 


WHAT   ENGLAND   THINKS   OF   AMERICA 

THE  title  I  have  chosen  for  this  chapter  is 
indiscreet,  and,  as  some  readers  may 
think,  misleading.  At  least  it  needs  this 
explanation — that  there  is  no  absolute  point 
of  view  in  England  about  the  United  States. 
"England"  does  not  think  (a  statement  not 
intended  to  be  humorous  at  the  expense  of 
my  own  people)  any  more  than  any  nation 
may  be  said  to  think  in  a  single  unanimous 
way  about  any  subject  under  the  sun.  Eng- 
land is  a  collection  of  individuals  and  groups 
of  individuals,  each  with  different  points  of 
view  or  shades  of  view,  based  upon  certain 
ideals  and  knowledge,  or  upon  passion,  ig- 
norance, elementary  common  sense,  or  ele- 
mentary stupidity,  like  the  United  States 
and  every  country  on  earth. 

It  would  convey  an  utterly  false  impression 
to  analyze  and  expound  the  opinions  of  one 
such  class,  or  to  give  as  a  general  truth  a  few 

125 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

individual  opinions.  One  can  only  get  at 
something  like  the  truth  by  following  the 
drift  of  current  thought,  by  contrasting  na- 
tional characteristics,  and  by  striking  a 
balance  between  extremes  of  thought.  It  is 
that  which  I  propose  to  do  in  this  chapter, 
frankly,  and  without  fear  of  giving  offense, 
because  to  my  mind  insincerity  on  a  subject 
like  this  does  more  harm  than  good. 

I  will  not  disguise,  therefore,  at  the  out- 
set, that  after  the  armistice  which  followed 
the  Great  War  huge  numbers  of  people  in 
England  became  annoyed,  bitter,  and  un- 
friendly to  the  United  States.  The  causes 
of  that  unkindness  of  sentiment  were  to  some 
extent  natural  and  inevitable,  owing  to  the 
state  of  mind  in  England  at  that  time. 
They  had  their  foundations  in  the  patriotism 
and  emotion  of  a  people  who  had  just 
emerged  from  the  crudest  ordeal  which  had 
ever  called  to  their  endurance  in  history. 
When  American  soldiers,  sailors,  politicians, 
and  patriots  said,  "Well,  boys,  we  won  the 
war!"  which,  in  their  enthusiasm  for  great 
achievements,  they  could  hardly  avoid  say- 
ing at  public  banquets  or  welcomes  home, 
where  every  word  is  not  measured  to  the 
sensibilities  of  other  people  or  to  the  exact 

126 


WHAT  ENGLAND  THINKS  OF  AMERICA 

truth,  English  folk  were  hurt.  They  were 
not  only  hurt,  but  they  were  angry.  Moth- 
ers of  boys  in  mean  streets,  or  rural  villages, 
or  great  mansions,  reading  these  words  in 
newspapers  which  gave  them  irritating  prom- 
inence, said,  "So  they  think  that  we  did 
nothing  in  the  years  before  they  came  to 
France!"  and  some  mothers  thought  of  the 
boys  who  had  died  in  1914,  1915,  1916,  1917, 
and  they  hated  the  thought  that  Americans 
should  claim  the  victory  which  so  many  Eng- 
lish, Scottish,  Irish,  Canadians,  Australians, 
New-Zealanders,  South-Africans,  and  French 
had  gained  most  of  all  by  long-suffering, 
immense  sacrifice,  and  hideous  losses. 

They  did  not  know,  though  I  for  one  tried 
to  tell  them,  that  all  over  the  United  States 
American  people  did  not  forget,  even  in  their 
justified  enthusiasm  for  the  valor  of  their 
own  men  and  the  immense  power  they  had 
prepared  to  hurl  against  the  enemy,  that 
France  and  England  had  borne  the  brunt  of 
the  war  in  the  long  years  when  Germany 
was  at  her  strongest. 

A  friend  of  mine — an  English  officer — was 
in  a  New  York  hotel  on  Armistice  Night, 
when  emotion  and  patriotic  enthusiasm  were 
high — and  hot.     A  young  American  mounted 

127 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

a  chair,  waving  the  Stars  and  Stripes.  He 
used  the  good  old  phrase:  "Well,  boys,  we 
won  the  war!  The  enemy  fell  to  pieces  as 
soon  as  the  doughboys  came  along.  Eng- 
land and  France  could  not  do  the  trick  with- 
out tfs.  We  taught  'em  how  to  fight  and  how 
to  win!" 

My  friend  smiled,  sat  tight,  and  said 
nothing.  He  remembered  a  million  dead  in 
British  ranks,  untold  and  unrecorded  hero- 
ism, the  first  French  victory  of  the  Marne, 
the  years  of  epic  fighting  when  French  and 
British  troops  had  hurled  themselves  against 
the  German  lines  and  strained  his  war- 
machine.  But  it  was  Armistice  Night,  and 
in  New  York,  and  the  "Yanks"  had  done 
jolly  well,  and  they  had  a  right  to  jubilation 
for  their  share  in  victory.  Let  the  boy 
shout,  and  good  luck  to  him.  But  an  Amer- 
ican rose  from  his  chair  and  pushed  his  way 
toward  my  friend. 

"I'm  ashamed  to  hear  such  rant  before 
British  and  French  officers,"  he  said,  holding 
out  his  hand.  "We  know  that  our  share  is 
not  as  great  as  yours,  within  a  thousand 
miles." 

Those  were  chivalrous  words.  They  rep- 
resented the  conviction,  I  am  sure,  of  mil- 

128 


WHAT  ENGLAND  THINKS  OF  AMERICA 

lions  of  Americans  of  the  more  thoughtful 
type,  who  would  not  allow  themselves  to  be 
swept  away  beyond  the  just  merits  of  their 
national  achievements,  even  by  the  fervor 
of  the  moment. 

But  in  England  people  only  knew  the 
boast  and  not  the  modesty.  Because  some 
Americans  claimed  too  much,  the  English  of 
the  lower  and  less  intelligent  classes  belittled 
the  real  share  of  victory  which  belonged  to 
America,  and  became  resentful.  It  was  so 
in  France  as  in  England.  It  was  lamentable, 
but  almost  unavoidable,  and  when  this  re- 
sentment and  this  sullen  denial  of  American 
victory  became  known  in  the  United  States, 
passed  over  the  wires  by  newspaper  cor- 
respondents, it  naturally  aroused  counter- 
action, equal  bitterness,  and  then  we  were  in 
a  vicious  circle,  abominable  in  its  effect  upon 
mutual  understanding  and  liking. 

All  that,  however,  was  limited  to  the 
masses,  for  the  most  part  certainly,  and  was 
only  used  as  poison  propaganda  by  the 
gutter  press  on  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic. 
Educated  people  in  both  countries  under- 
stood the  folly  and  squalor  of  that  stuff,  and 
discounted  it  accordingly. 

What  was  more  serious  in  its  effect  upon 

129 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

the  intelligent  classes  was  the  refusal  of  the 
Senate  to  ratify  the  Peace  Treaty  and  its  re- 
pudiation of  President  Wilson's  authority.  I 
have  already  dealt  in  previous  writings  with 
that  aspect  of  affairs,  and  have  tried  to  prove 
my  understanding  of  the  American  view. 
But  there  is  also  an  English  view,  which 
Americans  should  know  and  understand. 

At  the  time  I  am  writing  this  chapter,  and 
for  some  months  previously,  England  has 
been  irritated  with  the  United  States  because 
of  a  sense  of  having  been  "let  down"  over 
the  Peace  Treaty  and  the  League  of  Nations 
by  American  action.  I  think  that  irritation 
has  been  to  some  extent  justified.  When 
President  Wilson  came  to  London  he  re- 
ceived, as  I  have  told  elsewhere,  the  most 
enthusiastic  and  triumphant  ovation  that 
has  ever  been  given  to  a  foreign  visitor  by 
the  population  of  that  great  old  city.  The 
cheers  that  rose  in  storms  about  him  were 
shouted  not  only  because  his  personality 
seemed  to  us  then  to  have  the  biggest  and 
most  hopeful  qualities  of  leadership  in  the 
world,  but  because  he  was,  as  we  thought, 
the  authorized  representative  of  the  United 
States,  to  whom,  through  him,  we  gave  hom- 
age.    It  was  only  months  afterward,  when 

130 


WHAT  ENGLAND  THINKS  OF  AMERICA 

the  Peace  Treaty  had  been  signed  and  when 
the  League  of  Nations  (Wilson's  child)  had 
been  established,  that  we  were  told  that 
Wilson  was  not  the  authorized  representative 
of  the  United  States,  that  the  American  Sen- 
ate did  not  recognize  his  authority  to  pledge 
the  country  to  the  terms  of  the  treaty,  and 
that  the  signature  to  the  document  was  not 
worth  ten  cents.  That  made  us  look  pretty 
foolish.  It  made  France  and  Italy  and  other 
powers,  who  had  yielded  in  many  of  their  de- 
mands in  order  to  satisfy  President  Wilson's 
principles,  feel  pretty  mad.  It  made  a  laugh- 
ing-stock of  the  newrborn  League  of  Nations. 
It  wras  the  most  severe  blow  to  the  prospects 
of  world  peace  and  reconstruction.  In  Eng- 
land, as  I  know,  there  were  vast  numbers  of 
people  who  regarded  the  Peace  Treaty  as 
one  of  the  most  clumsy,  illogical,  and  danger- 
ous documents  ever  drawn  up  by  a  body  of 
diplomats.  I  am  one  of  those  who  think  so. 
But  that  has  nothing  to  do  with  the  refusal 
of  the  Senate  to  acknowledge  Wilson's 
signature. 

The  character  of  the  clauses  which  created 
a  series  of  international  blunders  leading  in- 
evitably to  new  wars  unless  they  are  altered 
during  the  next  decade  was  not  the  cause  of 

131 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

the  Senate's  "reservations."  The  American 
Senators  did  not  seem  to  be  worried  about 
that  aspect  of  the  treaty.  Their  only  worry 
was  to  safeguard  the  United  States  from  any 
responsibility  in  Europe,  and  to  protect  their 
own  traditional  powers  against  an  autocratic 
President.  However  right  they  may  have 
been,  it  must  at  least  be  acknowledged  by 
every  broad-minded  American  that  we  in 
Europe  were  put  completely  "into  the  cart" 
by  this  action,  and  had  some  excuse  for 
annoyance.  All  this  is  now  past  history,  and 
no  doubt  before  this  book  is  published  many 
other  things  will  have  happened  as  a  conse- 
quence of  the  events  which  followed  so 
rapidly  upon  the  Peace  of  Versailles,  so  that 
what  I  am  now  writing  will  read  like  his- 
torical reminiscence.  But  it  will  always  re- 
main a  painful  chapter,  and  it  will  only  be 
by  mutual  forbearance  and  the  most  deter- 
mined efforts  of  people  of  good  will  on  both 
sides  of  the  Atlantic  that  the  growth  of  a 
most  lamentable  misunderstanding  between 
our  two  peoples  in  consequence  of  those 
unfortunate  episodes  will  be  prevented. 

Another  cause  of  popular  discontent  with 
the  United  States  was  the  rather  abrupt 
statement  of  Mr.  Carter  Glass,  Secretary  of 

132 


WHAT  ENGLAND  THINKS  OF  AMERICA 

the  Treasury,  that  the  United  States  would 
not  grant  any  more  loans  to  Europe  so  long 
as  she  failed  to  readjust  her  financial  situa- 
tion by  necessary  taxation,  economy,  and 
production. 

The  general  (and  in  my  opinion  unjusti- 
fied) anger  aroused  by  this  statement  was 
expressed  by  a  cartoon  in  Punch  called 
"Another  Reservation."  It  was  a  picture 
of  a  very  sinister-looking  Uncle  Sam  turning 
his  back  upon  a  starving  woman  and  child 
who  appeal  to  his  charity,  and  he  says: 
"Very  sad  case.  But  I'm  afraid  she  ain't 
trying." 

Mr.  Punch  is  a  formidable  person  in  Eng- 
land, and  by  his  barbed  wit  may  destroy 
any  public  man  or  writing  man  who  lays 
himself  open  to  ridicule,  but  I  ventured  to 
risk  that  by  denouncing  the  cartoon  as  un- 
just and  unfair  in  spirit  and  fact.  I  pointed 
out  that  since  the  beginning  of  the  war  the 
United  States  had  shown  an  immense,  un- 
tiring, and  inexhaustible  generosity  toward 
the  suffering  peoples  of  Europe,  and  reminded 
England  how  under  Mr.  Hoover's  organiza- 
tion the  American  Relief  Committee  had 
fed  the  Belgian  and  French  populations  be- 
hind the  German  lines,  and  how  afterward 

133 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

they  had  poured  food  into  Poland,  Serbia, 
Austria,  and  other  starving  countries.  That 
challenge  I  made  against  Mr.  Punch  was 
supported  by  large  numbers  of  English 
people  who  wrote  to  me  expressing  their 
agreement  and  their  gratitude  to  America. 
They  deplored  the  spirit  of  the  cartoon  and 
the  evil  nature  of  so  many  attacks  in  low- 
class  journals  of  England  against  the  United 
States,  whose  own  gutter  press  was  at  the 
same  time  publishing  most  scurrilous  abuse 
of  us.  But  among  the  letters  I  received  was 
one  from  an  American  lady  which  I  will 
quote  now,  because  it  startled  me  at  the 
time,  and  provides,  in  spite  of  its  bitterness, 
some  slight  excuse  for  the  criticism  which 
was  aroused  in  England  at  the  time.  If  an 
American  could  feel  like  that,  scourging  her 
own  people  too  much  (as  I  think),  it  is  more 
pardonable  that  English  sentiment  should 
have  been  a  little  ruffled  by  America's  threat 
to  abandon  Europe. 

I  only  wish  with  all  my  heart  [she  wrote]  that  the 
Punch  cartoon  is  wholly  undeserved,  or  that  your 
kind  "apologia"  is  wholly  deserved.  I  have  never 
been  "too  proud  to  fight,"  but  a  great  deal  too  proud 
to  wear  laurels  I  haven't  earned.  Personally,  I  think 
the  drubbing  we  are  getting  is  wholesome  and  likely 
to  do  good.     We  have  been  given  praise  ad  nauseam, 

134 


WHAT  ENGLAND  THINKS  OF  AMERICA 

and,  to  be  honest,  you  can  never  compete  with  us  on 
that  ground.  We  can  praise  ourselves  in  terms  that 
would  silence  any  competitors.  .  .  . 

I  wish,  too,  that  I  could  believe  that  the  "beggars 
from  Europe"  had  either  their  hats  or  their  bags 
stuffed  with  dollars.  I'm  afraid  you  have  spoken  to 
the  Americans,  not  to  the  beggars.  I  was  one  my- 
self. I  went  home  in  April,  prouder  of  my  country 
than  I  had  ever  been,  jealous  of  its  good  repute,  and 
painfully  anxious  that  it  should  live  up  to  its  reputa- 
tion. I  fear  I  found  that  people  were  not  only  tired 
of  generosity,  but  wholly  indifferent  to  the  impres- 
sions being  so  widely  circulated  in  the  press — that 
France  had  been  guilty  of  every  form  of  petty  in- 
gratitude, that  the  atrocities  of  Great  Britain  in 
Ireland  outdid  the  Germans  in  Belgium  and  France. 
A  minority  everywhere  was  struggling  against  the 
tide,  with  dignity,  and  the  generosity  I  had  so  se- 
curely counted  on  from  my  own  people.  But  the 
collections  being  made  for  the  Serbians,  for  instance, 
were  despairingly  small.  Belgian  Relief  had  been 
turned  into  Serbian  Relief  groups,  and  from  New  York 
to  California  I  heard  the  same  tale — and,  alas,  ex- 
perienced it — people  were  tired  of  giving,  tired  of  the 
war.  In  New  York  I  was  invited  to  speak  before  a 
well-known  Women's  Club — I  was  "a  guest  of 
honor."  I  accepted,  and  spoke  for  ten  minutes,  and 
a  woman  at  a  table  near  by  begged  me  to  take  up  an 
immediate  contribution.  I  was  not  at  all  anxious  to 
do  so,  for  it  seemed  a  very  base  advantage  to  take  of 
a  luncheon  invitation,  so  I  referred  her  to  the  presi- 
dent. A  contribution  was  taken  up  by  a  small  group 
of  women,  all  fashionably  dressed,  with  pearl  or 
"near-pearl,"  and  the  result  was  exactly  $19.40.  As 
there  were  between  200  and  300  women  present  in 
the  ballroom,  I  was  inexpressibly  shocked,  and  sternly 

10  135 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

suggested  that  the  president  should  announce  the 
sum  for  which  I  should  have  to  account,  and  her 
speech  was  mildly  applauded.  All  through  my  trip 
I  felt  bewilderment.  I  had  just  come  from  Belgium 
and  France,  and  the  contrast  oppressed  me.  I  had 
the  saddest  kind  of  disillusionment,  relieved  by  the 
most  beautiful  instances  of  charity  and  unselfishness. 
Even  in  regard  to  the  Relief  of  Belgium  too  much 
stress  is  laid  on  our  generosity  and  a  false  impres- 
sion has  gone  abroad — an  impression  nothing  can 
ever  eradicate.  The  organization  of  the  B.  R.  F.  was 
American,  but  Mr.  Hoover  never  failed  to  underline 

how  much  of  the  fund  came  from  Great  Britain  and 

< 

Canada.  In  fact,  the  Belgian  women  embroidered 
their  touching  little  phrases  of  gratitude  to  the  Ameri- 
cans, as  I  myself  saw,  on  Canadian  flour  sacks. 
During  the  first  year  or  so  the  contributions  of  Ameri- 
cans were  wholly  incommensurate  with  our  wealth 
and  prosperity,  and  a  letter  from  Gertrude  Atherton 
a  year  after  the  war  scourged  us  for  our  indifference 
even  then. 

Mr.  Balfour's  revelation  that  Great  Britain  had 
contributed  £35,000,000  toward  the  relief  of  Austria, 
etc.,  made  my  heart  go  down  still  farther.  I  have 
tried  to  believe  that  my  experience  was  due  to  some- 
thing lacking  in  myself.  People  were  so  enchantingly 
kind,  so  ready  to  give  me  large  and  expensive  lunches, 
dinners,  teas — but  they  would  not  be  induced  to 
refrain  from  the  lunches  and  contribute  the  cost  of 
them  toward  my  cause.  .  .  . 

I  hope  you  will  pardon  this  long  effusion.  Like 
most  Americans  who  have  served  abroad  I  feel  we 
came  in  too  late,  we  failed  to  stay  on  the  ground  to 
clear  up  afterward,  and  now  we  are  indulging  in  the 
most  wicked  propaganda  against  our  late  allies- 
France   as   well   as   England.     Personally,    I   realize 

136 


WHAT  ENGLAND  THINKS  OF  AMERICA 

that  if  we  had  contributed  twenty  times  as  much  I 
should  still  not  feel  we  had  done  enough.  If  you  were 
not  so  confirmed  a  friend  of  America,  I  could  never 
write  as  I  have  done,  but  just  because  you  reach  such 
an  enormous  public,  because  your  influence  is  so  great, 
I  am  anxious  that  America  should  not  be  given  undue 
praise — which  she  does  not  herself  credit — and  that 
the  disastrous  results  of  her  policy  (if  we  have  one) 
should  be  printed  clear  for  her  to  read  and  profit  by. 

That  is  a  sincere,  painful,  and  beautiful 
letter,  and  I  think  it  ought  to  be  read  in  the 
United  States,  not  because  I  indorse  its 
charge  against  America's  lack  of  generosity — 
I  cannot  do  that — but  because  it  exculpates 
England  and  France  of  unreasoning  disap- 
pointment, and  is  also  the  cry  of  a  generous 
American  soul,  moved  by  the  sufferings  of 
Europe,  and  eager  that  her  people  should 
help  more,  and  not  less,  in  the  reconstruction 
of  the  world.  The  English  people  did  not 
take  her  view  that  the  Americans  had  not 
done  enough  or  were  tired  of  generosity. 
It  must  be  admitted  by  those  who  followed 
our  press  that,  apart  from  two  gutter  jour- 
nals, there  was  a  full  recognition  of  what  the 
United  States  had  done,  and  continual  re- 
minders that  no  policy  would  be  tolerated 
which  did  not  have  as  its  basis  Anglo- 
American  friendship. 

137 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

Upon  quite  another  level  of  argument  is 
the  criticism  of  American  psychology  and 
political  evolution  expressed  by  various  Eng- 
lish writers  upon  their  return  from  visits  to 
the  United  States,  and  a  fairly  close  ac- 
quaintance with  the  character  of  American 
democracy  as  it  was  revealed  during  the  war, 
and  afterward.  The  judgment  of  these 
writers  does  not  affect  public  opinion,  be- 
cause it  does  not  reach  down  to  the  masses. 
It  is  confined  rather  to  the  student  type  of 
mind,  and  probably  has  remained  unnoticed 
by  the  average  man  and  woman  in  the 
United  States.  It  is,  however,  very  in- 
teresting because  it  seeks  to  forecast  the 
future  of  America  as  a  world  power  and  as  a 
democracy.  The  chief  charge  leveled  against 
the  intellectual  tendency  of  the  United  States 
may  be  summed  up  in  one  word,  "intoler- 
ance." Men  like  George  Bernard  Shaw, 
J.  A.  Hobson,  and  H.  W.  Massingham  do 
not  find  in  their  study  of  the  American 
temperament  or  in  the  American  form  of  gov- 
ernment the  sense  of  liberty  with  which  the 
people  of  the  United  States  credit  themselves, 
and  with  which  all  republican  democracies 
are  credited  by  the  proletariat  in  European 
countries. 

138 


WHAT  ENGLAND  THINKS  OF  AMERICA 

They  seem  inclined  to  believe,  indeed, 
that  America  has  less  liberty  in  the  way  of 
free  opinion  and  free  speech  than  the  Eng- 
lish under  their  hereditary  monarchy,  and 
that  the  spirit  of  the  people  is  harshly  intoler- 
ant of  minorities  and  nonconforming  indi- 
viduals, or  of  any  idea  contrary  to  the  general 
popular  opinion  of  the  times.  Some  of  these 
critics  see  in  the  "Statue  of  Liberty"  in  New 
York  Harbor  a  figure  of  mockery  behind 
which  is  individualism  enchained  by  an 
autocratic  oligarchy  and  trampled  underfoot 
by  the  intolerance  of  the  masses.  They 
produce  in  proof  of  this  not  only  the  position 
of  an  American  President,  with  greater  power 
over  the  legislature  than  any  constitutional 
king,  but  the  mass  violence  of  the  majority 
in  its  refusal  to  admit  any  difference  of 
opinion  with  regard  to  war  aims  during  the 
time  of  war  fever,  and  the  tyrannical  action 
of  the  Executive  in  its  handling  of  labor 
disputes  and  industrial  leaders,  during  and 
after  the  war. 

It  is,  I  think,  true  that  as  soon  as  America 
entered  the  war  there  was  no  liberty  of 
opinion  allowed  in  the  United  States.  There 
was  no  tolerance  of  "conscientious  objectors  " 
nor  mercy  toward  people  who  from  religious 

139 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

motives,  or  intellectual  crankiness,  were 
antagonistic  to  the  use  of  armed  might. 
People  who  did  not  subscribe  to  the  Red 
Cross  funds  were  marked  down,  I  am  told, 
dismissed  from  their  posts,  and  socially 
ruined.  Many  episodes  of  that  kind  were 
reported,  and  startled  the  advanced  radicals 
in  England  who  had  regarded  the  United 
States  as  the  land  of  liberty.  Americans 
may  retort  that  we  did  not  give  gentle 
treatment  to  our  own  "conscientious  ob- 
jectors," and  that  is  true.  Many  of  them 
were  put  into  prison  and  roughly  handled, 
but  on  the  other  hand  there  was  a  formal, 
though  insincere,  acknowledgment  that  even 
in  time  of  war  there  should  be  liberty  of 
conscience,  and  a  clause  to  that  effect  was 
passed  by  Parliament.  In  spite  also  of  the 
severity  of  censorship,  and  the  martial  law 
that  was  enforced  by  the  Defense  of  the 
Realm  Act,  there  was,  I  believe,  a  greater 
freedom  of  criticism  allowed  to  the  press 
than  would  have  been  tolerated  by  the 
United  States.  Periodicals  like  the  Nation 
and  the  New  Statesman,  even  newspapers 
like  the  Daily  Mail  and  the  Morning  Post, 
indulged  in  violent  criticism  of  the  conduct  of 
the  war,  the  methods  of  the  War  Cabinet, 

140 


WHAT  ENGLAND  THINKS  OF  AMERICA 

the  action  and  military  policy  of  leaders  like 
Lord  Kitchener,  and  the  failure  of  military 
campaigns  in  the  Dardanelles  and  other 
places.  No  breath  of  criticism  against  Amer- 
ican leadership  or  generalship  was  admitted 
to  the  American  press,  and  their  war  cor- 
respondents were  censored  with  far  greater 
severity  than  their  English  comrades,  who 
were  permitted  to  describe,  very  fully,  re- 
verses as  well  as  successes  in  the  fields  of 
war. 

What,  however,  has  startled  the  advanced 
wing  of  English  political  thought  more  than 
all  that  is  the  ruthless  way  in  which  the 
United  States  government  has  dealt  with 
labor  disputes  and  labor  leaders  since  the 
war.  The  wholesale  arrests  and  deportations 
of  men  accused  of  revolutionary  propaganda 
seem  to  these  sympathizers  with  revolution- 
ary ideals  as  gross  in  their  violation  of  liberty 
as  the  British  government's  coercion  of  Ire- 
land. These  people  believe  that  American 
democracy  has  failed  in  the  essential  prin- 
ciple which  alone  justifies  democracy,  a 
toleration  of  minorities  of  opinion  and  of  the 
absolute  liberty  of  the  individual  within  the 
law.  They  say  that  even  in  England  there 
is  greater  liberty,  in  spite  of  its  mediaeval 

141 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

structure.  In  Hyde  Park  on  Sunday  morn- 
ing one  may  hear  speeches  which  would  cause 
broken  heads  and  long  terms  of  imprison- 
ment if  uttered  in  New  York.  Labor,  they 
say,  would  rise  in  instant  and  general  revolt 
if  any  of  their  men  were  treated  with  the 
tyranny  which  befalls  labor  leaders  in  the 
United  States. 

To  my  mind  a  great  deal  of  this  criticism 
is  due  to  a  misconception  of  the  meaning  of 
democracy.  In  England  it  was  a  tradition 
of  liberal  thought  that  democracy  meant 
not  only  the  right  of  the  people  to  govern 
themselves,  but  the  right  of  the  individual  or 
of  any  body  of  men  to  express  their  disagree- 
ment with  the  policy  of  the  state,  or  with  the 
majority  opinion,  or  with  any  idea  which 
annoyed  them  in  any  way.  But,  as  we  have 
seen  by  recent  history,  democratic  rule  does 
not  mean  individual  liberty.  Democracy  is 
government  by  the  majority  of  the  people, 
and  that  majority  will  be  less  tolerant  of 
dissent  than  autocracy  itself,  which  can 
often  afford  to  give  greater  liberty  of  expres- 
sion to  the  minority  because  of  its  inherent 
strength.  The  Russian  Soviet  government, 
which  professes  to  be  the  most  democratic 
form  of  government  in  the  world,  is  utterly 

142 


WHAT  ENGLAND  THINKS  OF  AMERICA 

intolerant  of  minorities.  I  suppose  there  is 
less  individual  liberty  in  Russia  than  in  any 
other  country,  because  disagreement  with 
the  state  opinion  is  looked  upon  as  treachery 
to  the  majority  rule.  So  in  the  United 
States,  which  is  a  real  democracy,  in  spite 
of  the  power  of  capital,  there  is  less  tolera- 
tion of  eccentric  notions  than  in  England, 
especially  when  the  majority  of  Americans 
are  overwhelmed  by  a  general  impulse  of 
enthusiasm  or  passion,  such  as  happened 
when  they  went  into  the  war.  The  people 
of  the  minority  are  then  regarded  as  enemies 
of  the  state,  traitors  to  their  fellow-citizens, 
and  outlaws.  They  are  crushed  accordingly 
by  the  weight  of  mass  opinion,  which  is 
ruthless  and  merciless,  with  more  authority 
and  power  than  the  decree  of  a  king  or  the 
law  of  an  aristocratic  form  of  government. 
Although  disagreeing  to  some  extent  with 
those  who  criticize  the  American  sense  of 
liberty,  I  do  believe  that  there  is  a  danger  in 
the  United  States  of  an  access  of  popular 
intolerance,  and  sudden  gusts  of  popular 
passion,  which  may  sweep  the  country  and 
lead  to  grave  trouble.  Being  the  greatest 
democracy  in  the  world,  it  is  subject  to 
the  weakness  of  democracy  as  well  as  en- 

143 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

dowed  with  its  strength,  and  to  my  mind  the 
essential  weakness  of  democracy  is  due  to 
the  unsteadiness  and  feverishness  of  public 
opinion.  When  the  impulse  of  public  opin- 
ion happens  to  be  right  it  is  the  most  splendid 
and  vital  force  in  the  world,  and  no  obstacle 
can  stand  against  it.  The  idealism  of  a 
people  attains  almost  supernatural  force. 
But  if  it  happens  to  be  wrong  it  may  lead 
to  national  and  world  disaster. 

In  countries  like  England  public  opinion 
is  still  controlled  and  checked  by  a  system 
of  heavy  drag  wheels,  which  is  an  intolerable 
nuisance  when  one  wants  to  get  moving. 
But  that  system  is  very  useful  when  there 
are  rocks  ahead  and  the  ship  of  state  has  to 
steer  a  careful  course.  Our  constitutional 
monarchy,  our  hereditary  chamber  composed 
of  men  who  do  not  hold  their  office  by  popu- 
lar vote,  our  traditional  and  old-fashioned 
school  of  diplomacy,  our  social  castes  domi- 
nated by  those  on  top  who  are  conservative 
and  cautious  because  of  their  possessions 
and  privileges,  are  abominably  hindering  to 
ardent  souls  who  want  quick  progress,  but 
they  are  also  a  national  safeguard  against 
wild  men.  The  British  system  of  govern- 
ment, and  the  social  structure  rising  by  a 

144 


WHAT  ENGLAND  THINKS  OF  AMERICA 

series  of  caste  gradations  to  the  topmost 
ranks,  are  capable  of  tremendous  reforms 
and  changes  being  made  gradually,  and 
without  any  violent  convulsion  or  break 
with  tradition. 

I  am  of  opinion  that  this  is  not  so  in  the 
United  States,  owing  to  the  greater  pressure 
of  mass  emotion.  If,  owing  to  the  effects  of 
war  throughout  the  world,  altering  the 
economic  conditions  of  life  and  the  psy- 
chology of  peoples,  there  is  a  demand  for 
radical  alteration  in  the  conditions  of  labor 
within  the  United  States,  and  for  a  different 
distribution  of  wealth  (as  there  is  bound  to 
be),  it  is,  in  the  opinion  of  many  observers, 
almost  certain  thai  these  changes  will  be 
effected  after  a  period  of  greater  violence  in 
America  than  in  England.  The  clash  be- 
tween capital  and  labor,  they  think,  will  be 
more  direct  and  more  ruthless  in  its  methods 
of  conflict  on  both  sides.  It  will  not  be 
eased  by  the  numerous  differences  of  social 
class,  shading  off  one  into  the  other,  which 
one  finds  in  a  less  democratic  country  like 
mine,  where  the  old  aristocratic  families 
and  the  country  landowning  families,  below 
the  aristocracy,  are  bound  up  traditionally 
with  the  sentiment  of  the  agricultural  popu- 

145 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

lation,  and  where  the  middle  classes  in  the 
cities  are  sympathetic  on  the  one  hand  with 
the  just  demands  of  the  wage-earning  crowd, 
and,  on  the  other  hand,  by  snobbishness,  by 
romanticism,  by  intellectual  association,  and 
by  financial  ambitions  with  the  governing, 
and  moneyed,  regime. 

There  are  students  of  life  in  the  United 
States  who  forecast  two  possible  ways  of 
development  in  the  future  history  of  the 
American  people.  Neither  of  them  is  pleas- 
ant to  contemplate,  and  I  hope  that  neither 
is  true,  but  I  think  there  is  a  shade  of  truth 
in  them,  and  that  they  are  sufficiently  pos- 
sible to  be  considered  seriously  as  dangers 
ahead. 

The  first  vision  of  these  minor  prophets 
(and  gloomy  souls)  is  a  social  revolution  in 
the  United  States  on  Bolshevik  lines,  leading 
through  civil  strife  between  the  forces  of  the 
wage-earning  classes  and  the  profit-holding 
classes  to  anarchy  as  fierce,  as  wild,  and  as 
bloody  as  that  in  Russia  during  the  Reign 
of  Terror. 

They  see  Fifth  Avenue  swept  by  machine- 
gun  fire,  and  its  rich  shops  sacked,  and  some 
of  its  skyscrapers  rising  in  monstrous  bon- 
fires to  lick  the  sky  with  flames. 

146 


WHAT  ENGLAND  THINKS  OF  AMERICA 

They  see  cities  like  Pittsburgh,  Detroit, 
and  Cleveland  in  the  hands  of  revolutionary 
committees  of  workmen  after  wild  scenes  of 
pillage  and  mob  passion. 

They  see  the  rich  daughters  of  million- 
aires stripped  of  their  furs  and  their  pearls 
and  roughly  handled  by  hordes  of  angry 
men,  hungry  after  long  strikes  and  lockouts, 
desperate  because  of  a  long  and  undecided 
warfare  with  the  strong  and  organized  powers 
of  law  and  of  capital. 

Their  vision  is  rather  hazy  about  the  out- 
come of  this  imaginary  civil  war,  but  of  its 
immense,  far-reaching  anarchy  they  have  no 
doubt,  with  the  certainty  that  prophets 
have  until  the  progress  of  history  proves 
them  to  be  false. 

Let  me  say  for  myself  that  I  do  not  pose 
as  a  prophet  nor  believe  this  particular 
prophecy  in  its  lurid  details.  But  I  do  be- 
lieve that  there  may  be  considerable  social 
strife  in  the  United  States  for  various  rea- 
sons. One  reason  which  stares  one  in  the 
face  is  the  immense,  flaunting,  and  dangerous 
luxury  of  the  wealthy  classes  in  cities  like 
New  York.  It  is  provocative  and  challeng- 
ing to  masses  of  wage-earners  who  find 
prices  rising  against  them  quicker  than  their 

147 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

wages  rise,  and  who  wish  not  only  for  a 
greater  share  of  the  proceeds  of  their  labor, 
but  also  a  larger  control  of  the  management 
and  machinery  of  labor.  The  fight,  if  it 
comes,  is  just  as  much  for  control  as  for 
profit,  and  resistance  on  the  part  of  capital 
will  be  fierce  and  ruthless  on  that  point. 

American  society — the  high  caste  of  mil- 
lionaires and  semi-millionaires,  and  demi- 
semi-millionaires — is  perhaps  rather  careless 
in  its  display  of  wealth  and  in  its  open  mani- 
festations of  luxury.  The  long,  unending 
line  of  automobiles  that  go  crawling  down 
Fifth  Avenue  and  rushing  down  Riverside 
Drive,  on  any  evening  of  the  year,  reveal- 
ing women  all  aglitter  with  diamonds,  with 
priceless  furs  round  their  white  shoulders, 
in  gowns  that  have  cost  the  year's  income  of 
a  working  family,  has  no  parallel  in  any  cap- 
ital of  Europe.  There  is  no  such  pageant  of 
wealth  in  London  or  Paris.  In  no  capital  is 
there  such  luxury  as  one  finds  in  New  York 
hotels,  mansions,  and  ballrooms.  The  evi- 
dence of  money  is  overwhelming  and  oppres- 
sive. The  generosity  of  many  of  these 
wealthy  people,  their  own  simplicity,  good 
humor,  and  charm,  are  not  safeguards  against 
the  envy  and  the  hatred  of  those  who  strug- 

148 


WHAT  ENGLAND  THINKS  OF  AMERICA 

gle  hard  for  a  living  wage  and  for  a  security 
in  life  which  is  harder  still  to  get. 

When  I  was  in  America  I  found  a  con- 
sciousness of  this  among  the  rich  people, 
with  some  of  whom  I  came  in  touch.  They 
were  afraid  of  the  future.  They  saw  trouble 
ahead,  and  they  seemed  anxious  to  build 
bridges  between  the  ranks  of  labor  and  their 
own  class.  The  wisest  among  them  did  not 
adopt  the  stiff-necked  attitude  of  complete 
hostility  to  the  demands  of  labor  for  a  more 
equal  share  of  profit  and  of  governance. 
One  or  two  men  I  met  remembered  the  days 
when  they  were  at  the  bottom  of  the  ladder, 
and  said,  "Those  fellows  are  right.  .  .  .  I'm 
going  half-way  to  meet  them." 

If  capital  goes  anything  like  half-way, 
there  will  be  no  bloody  conflict  in  the  United 
States.  But  there  will  be  revolution,  not 
less  radical  because  not  violent.  That  meet- 
ing half-way  between  capital  and  labor  in  the 
United  States  would  be  the  greatest  revolu- 
tion the  modern  world  has  seen. 

That,  then,  is  one  of  the  ways  in  which 
English  observers  see  the  future  of  the  United 
States.  The  other  way  they  suggest  would 
be  a  great  calamity  for  the  world.  It  is  the 
way  of  militarism — a  most  grisly  thought! 

149 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

It  is  argued  by  those  who  take  this  line  of 
prophecy  that  democracy  is  no  enemy  of 
war.  On  the  contrary,  they  say,  a  democ- 
racy like  that  of  the  United  States,  virile, 
easily  moved  to  emotion,  passionate,  sure  of 
its  strength,  jealous  of  its  honor,  and  quick 
to  resent  any  fancied  insult,  is  more  liable 
to  catch  the  war  fever  than  nations  con- 
trolled by  cautious  diplomats  and  by  heredi- 
tary rulers.  It  is  generally  believed  now 
that  the  Great  War  in  Europe  which  ravaged 
so  many  countries  was  not  made  by  the 
peoples  on  either  side,  and  that  it  did  not 
happen  until  the  rival  powers  on  top  desired 
it  to  happen  and  pressed  the  buttons  and 
spoke  the  spell-words  which  called  the  armies 
to  the  colors.  It  is  probable,  and  almost 
certain,  that  it  would  not  have  happened  at 
all  if  the  peoples  had  been  left  to  themselves, 
if  the  decision  of  war  and  peace  had  been  in 
their  hands,  and  if  their  passions  had  not 
been  artificially  roused  and  educated.  But 
that  is  no  argument,  some  think,  against  the 
warlike  character  of  strong  democracies. 
The  ancient  Greeks  were  a  great  democracy, 
but  they  were  the  most  ardent  warriors  of 
their  world,  and  fought  for  markets,  sea 
supremacy,  and  racial  prestige. 

150 


WHAT  ENGLAND  THINKS  OF  AMERICA 

So  some  people  believe  that  the  United 
States  may  adopt  a  philosophy  of  militarism 
challenging  the  sea-power  of  the  British 
Empire,  by  adding  Mexico  to  her  dominions, 
and  by  capturing  the  strategic  points  of  the 
world's  trade  routes.  They  see  in  the  ease 
with  which  the  United  States  adopted  mili- 
tary service  in  the  late  war  and  the  rapid, 
efficient  way  in  which  an  immense  army  was 
raised  and  trained  a  menace  to  the  future  of 
the  world,  because  what  was  done  once  to 
crush  the  enemy  of  France  and  England  may 
be  done  again  if  France  or  England  arouse 
the  hostility  of  the  American  people.  The 
intense  self-confidence  of  the  Americans, 
their  latent  contempt  of  European  peoples, 
their  quickness  to  take  affront  at  fancied 
slights  worked  up  by  an  unscrupulous  press, 
their  consciousness  of  the  military  power  that 
was  organized  but  only  partially  used  in  the 
recent  war,  and  their  growing  belief  that  they 
are  a  people  destined  to  take  and  hold  the 
leadership  of  the  world,  constitute,  in  the 
opinion  of  some  nervous  onlookers,  a  psy- 
chology which  may  lead  the  United  States 
into  tremendous  and  terrible  adventures.  I 
have  heard  it  stated  by  many  people  not 
wholly  insane  that  the  next  world  war  will 

11  151 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

be  mainly  a  duel  between  the  United  States 
and  the  British  Empire. 

They  are  not  wholly  insane,  the  people 
who  say  these  things  over  the  dinner-table 
or  in  the  club  smoking-room,  yet  to  my  mind 
such  opinions  verge  on  insanity.  It  is  of 
course  always  possible  that  any  nation  may 
lose  all  sense  of  reason  and  play  the  wild 
beast,  as  Germany  did.  It  is  always  possible 
that  by  some  overwhelming  popular  passion 
any  nation  may  be  stricken  with  war  fever. 
But  of  all  nations  in  the  world  I  think  the 
people  of  the  United  States  are  least  likely 
to  behave  in  that  way,  especially  after  their 
experience  in  the  European  war. 

The  men  who  went  back  were  under  no  il- 
lusions as  to  the  character  of  modern  war- 
fare. They  hated  it.  They  had  seen  its 
devilishness.  They  were  convinced  of  its 
idiocy,  and  in  every  American  home  to  which 
they  returned  were  propagandists  against 
war  as  an  argument  or  as  a  romance.  Apart 
from  that,  it  is  almost  certain  that  mili- 
tarism of  an  aggressive  kind  is  repugnant  to 
the  tradition  and  instinct  of  the  American 
neople.  They  have  no  use  for  "shining 
armor"  and  all  the  old  shibboleths  of  war's 
pomp  and  pageantry  which  put  a  spell  on 

152 


WHAT  ENGLAND  THINKS  OF  AMERICA 

European  peoples.  The  military  tradition 
based  on  the  falsity  of  war's  "glory"  is  not 
in  their  spirit  or  in  their  blood.  They  will 
fight  for  the  safety  of  civilization,  as  it  was 
threatened  in  1914,  for  the  rescue  of  free 
peoples  menaced  by  brutal  destruction,  ajid 
they  will  fight,  as  all  brave  people  will  fight, 
to  safeguard  their  own  women  and  children 
and  liberty. 

But  I  do  not  believe  that  the  American  peo- 
ple will  ever  indulge  in  aggressive  warfare  for 
the  sake  of  imperial  ambitions  or  for  world 
domination.  Their  spirit  of  adventure  finds 
scope  in  higher  ideals,  in  the  victories  of 
science  and  commerce,  in  the  organization  of 
every-day  life,  in  the  triumph  of  industry,  in 
the  development  of  the  natural  sources  of 
wealth  which  belong  to  their  great  country 
and  their  ardent  individuality.  They  believe 
in  peace,  if  we  may  judge  by  their  history 
and  tradition,  and  non-interference  with  the 
outside  world.  Their  hostility  to  the  peace 
terms  and  to  certain  clauses  in  the  League  of 
Nations  was  due  to  a  deep-seated  distrust  of 
entanglements  with  foreign  troubles,  jeal- 
ousies, and  rivalries,  and  the  spirit  of  the 
United  States,  so  far  from  desiring  "man- 
dates" over  great  populations  outside  the 

153 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

frontiers  of  its  own  people,  harked  back  to 
the  old  faith  in  a  "splendid  isolation"  free 
from  imperial  responsibilities.  The  people 
were  perhaps  too  cautious  and  too  reserved. 
They  risked  the  chance  they  had  of  reshaping 
the  structure  of  human  society  to  a  higher 
level  of  common  sense  and  liberty.  They 
made  "reservations"  which  caused  the  with- 
drawal of  their  representatives  from  the 
council-chamber  of  the  Allied  nations.  But 
that  was  due  not  merely,  I  think,  to  party 
politics  or  the  passionate  rivalry  of  states- 
men. Truly  and  instinctively,  it  was  due 
to  the  desire  of  the  American  people  to  draw 
back  to  their  own  frontiers  and  to  work  out 
their  own  destiny  in  peace,  neither  inter- 
fering nor  being  interfered  with,  according 
to  their  traditional  and  popular  policy. 

Apart  from  individual  theorists,  of  the 
"cranky"  kind,  the  main  body  of  intellectual 
qpinion  in  England,  as  far  as  I  know  it,  looks 
to  the  United  States  as  the  arbitrator  of  the 
world's  destiny,  and  the  leader  of  the  world's 
democracies,  on  peaceful  and  idealistic  lines. 
There  is  a  conviction  among  many  of  us — 
not  killed  by  the  controversy  over  the  Peace 
Treaty — that  the  spirit  of  the  American 
people  as  a  whole  is  guided  by  an  innate 

154 


WHAT  ENGLAND  THINKS  OF  AMERICA 

common  sense  free  from  antiquated  spell- 
words,  facing  the  facts  of  life  shrewdly  and 
honestly,  and  leaning  always  to  the  side  of 
popular  liberty  against  all  tyrannies  of 
castes,  dynasties,  and  intolerance.  Aloof 
from  the  historical  enmities  that  still  divide 
the  nations  of  Europe,  yet  not  aloof  in  sym- 
pathy with  the  sufferings,  the  strivings,  and 
the  sentiment  of  those  peoples,  the  United 
States  is  able  to  play  the  part  of  a  recon- 
ciling power,  in  any  league  of  nations,  with 
a  detached  and  disinterested  judgment.  It 
is  above  all  because  it  is  disinterested  that 
Europe  has  faith  and  trust  in  its  sense 
of  justice.  It  is  not  out  for  empire,  for  re- 
venge, or  for  diplomatic  vanity.  Its  people 
are  supporters  of  President  Wilson's  ideal  of 
"open  covenants  openly  arrived  at,"  and  of 
the  "self-determination  of  nations,"  however 
violently  they  challenge  the  authority  by 
which  their  President  pledged  them  to  defi- 
nite clauses  in  an  unpopular  contract.  They 
are  a  friendly  and  not  unfriendly  folk  in 
their  instincts  and  in  their  methods.  They 
respond  quickly  and  generously  to  any  appeal 
to  honest  sentiment,  though  they  have  no 
patience  with  hypocrisy.  They  are  realists, 
and  hate  sham,  pose,  and  falsehood.     Give 

155 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

them  "a  square  deal"  and  they  will  be 
scrupulous  to  a  high  standard  of  business 
morality.  Because  of  the  infusion  of  foreign 
blood  in  their  democracy  which  has  been 
slowly  produced  from  the  great  melting-pot 
of  nations,  they  are  subject  to  all  the  sensi- 
bilities of  the  human  race  and  not  narrowly 
fixed  to  one  racial  idea  or  type  of  mind.  The 
Celt,  the  Slav,  the  Saxon,  the  Teuton,  the 
Hebrew,  and  the  Latin  strains  are  present  in 
the  subconsciousness  of  the  American  people, 
so  that  they  are  capable  of  an  enormous 
range  of  sympathy  with  human  nature  in 
its  struggle  upward  to  the  light.  They  are 
the  new  People  of  Destiny  in  the  world  of 
progress,  because  after  their  early  adven- 
tures of  youth,  their  time  of  preparation, 
their  immense  turbulent  growth,  their  forging 
of  tools,  and  training  of  soul,  they  stand  now 
in  their  full  strength  and  maturity,  powerful 
with  the  power  of  a  great,  free,  confident 
people. 

To  some  extent,  and  I  think  in  an  increas- 
ing way,  the  old*  supremacy  which  Europe 
had  is  passing  westward.  Europe  is  stricken, 
tired,  and  poor.  America  is  hearty,  healthy, 
and  rich.  Intellectually  it  is  still  boyish  and 
young  and  raw.     There  is  the  wisdom  as  well 

156 


WHAT  ENGLAND  THINKS  OF  AMERICA 

as  the  sadness  of  old  age  in  Europe.  We 
have  more  subtlety  of  brain,  more  delicate 
sense  of  art,  a  literature  more  expressive  of 
the  complicated  emotions  which  belong  to 
an  old  heritage  of  civilization,  luxury,  and 
philosophy.  But  I  look  for  a  Golden  Age  of 
literature  and  art  in  America  which  shall  be 
like  our  Elizabethan  period,  fresh  and  spring- 
like, and  rich  in  vitality  and  promise.  I  am 
bound  to  believe  that  out  of  the  fusion  of 
races  in  America,  and  out  of  their  present 
period  of  wealth  and  power,  and  out  of  this 
new  awakening  to  the  problems  of  life  out- 
side their  own  country,  there  will  come  great 
minds,  and  artists,  and  leaders  of  thought, 
surpassing  any  that  have  yet  revealed  them- 
selves. All  our  reading  of  history  points  to 
that  evolution.  The  flowering-time  of  Amer- 
ica seems  due  to  arrive,  after  its  growing 
pains. 

Be  that  as  it  may,  it  is  clear,  at  least,  that 
the  destiny  of  the  American  people  is  now 
marked  out  for  the  great  mission  of  leading 
the  world  to  a  new  phase  of  civilization.  By 
the  wealth  they  have,  and  by  their  power  for 
good  or  evil,  they  have  a  controlling  influ- 
ence in  the  reshaping  of  the  world  after  its 
convulsions.     They  cannot  escape  from  that 

157 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

power,  even  though  they  shrink  from  its 
responsibility.  Their  weight  thrown  one 
way  or  the  other  will  turn  the  scale  of  all 
the  balance  of  the  world's  desires.  People 
of  destiny,  they  have  the  choice  of  arranging 
the  fate  of  many  peoples.  By  their  action 
they  may  plunge  the  world  into  strife  again 
or  settle  its  peace.  They  may  kill  or  cure. 
They  may  be  reconcilers  or  destroyers. 
They  may  be  kind  or  cruel.  It  is  a  terrific 
power  for  any  people  to  hold.  If  I  were  a 
citizen  of  the  United  States  I  should  be 
afraid — afraid  lest  my  country  should  by 
passion,  or  by  ignorance,  or  by  sheer  care- 
lessness take  the  wrong  way. 

I  think  some  Americans  have  that  fear. 
I  have  met  some  who  are  anxious  and  dis- 
tressed. But  I  think  that  the  majority  of 
Americans  do  not  realize  the  power  that  has 
come  to  them  nor  their  new  place  in  the 
world.  They  have  a  boisterous  sense  of  im- 
portance and  prestige,  but  rather  as  a  young 
college  man  is  aware  of  his  lustiness  and 
vitality  without  considering  the  duties  and 
the  dangers  that  have  come  to  him  with 
manhood.  They  are  inclined  to  a  false 
humility,  saying:  "We  aren't  our  brothers' 
keepers,   anyway.     We  needn't  go  fussing 

158 


WHAT  ENGLAND  THINKS  OF  AMERICA 

around.  Let's  keep  to  our  own  job  and  let 
the  other  people  settle  their  own  affairs." 
But  meanwhile  the  other  people  know  that 
American  policy,  American  decisions,  the 
American  attitude  in  world  problems,  will 
either  make  or  mar  them.  It  is  essential  for 
the  safety  of  the  world,  and  of  civilization 
itself,  that  the  United  States  should  realize 
its  responsibilities  and  fulfill  the  destiny  that 
has  come  to  it  by  the  evolution  of  history. 
To  those  whom  I  call  the  People  of  Destiny 
I  humbly  write  the  words:  Let  the  world 
have  peace. 


VI 

AMERICANS   IN   EUROPE 

IT  is  only  during  the  war  and  afterward 
that  European  people  have  come  to  know 
anything  in  a  personal  way  of  the  great  de- 
mocracy in  the  United  States.  Before  then 
America  was  judged  by  tourists  who  came  to 
"do"  Europe  in  a  few  months  or  a  few 
weeks.  In  France,  especially,  all  of  them 
were  popularly  supposed  to  be  "million- 
aires," or,  at  least,  exceedingly  rich.  Many 
of  them  were,  and  in  Paris,  to  which  they 
went  in  greatest  numbers,  they  were  preyed 
upon  by  hotel  managers  and  shopkeepers, 
and  were  caricatured  in  French  farces  and 
French  newspapers  as  the  "nouveaux  riches" 
of  the  world  who  could  afford  to  buy  all  the 
luxury  of  life,  but  had  no  refinement  of  taste 
or  delicacy  of  sentiment.  There  was  an 
enormous  ignorance  of  the  education,  civiliza- 
tion, and  temperament  of  the  great  masses  of 
people  in  the  United  States,  and  it  was  an 

160 


AMERICANS  IN  EUROPE 

absolute  belief  among  the  middle  classes  of 
Europe  that  the  "almighty  dollar"  was  the 
God  of  America  and  that  there  was  no  other 
worship  on  that  side  of  the  Atlantic. 

This  opinion  changed  in  a  remarkable  way 
during  the  war  and  before  the  United  States 
had  sent  a  single  soldier  to  French  soil. 
The  cause  of  the  change  was  mainly  the  im- 
mensely generous,  and  marvelously  efficient, 
campaign  of  rescue  for  war-stricken  and 
starving  people  by  the  American  Relief  Com- 
mittee under  the  direction  of  Mr.  Hoover. 

In  February  of  1915  I  left  the  war  zone 
for  a  little  while  on  a  mission  to  Holland,  to 
study  the  Dutch  methods  of  dealing  with 
their  enormous  problem  caused  by  the  in- 
vasion of  Belgian  refugees.  Into  one  little 
village  across  the  Scheldt  200,000  Belgians 
had  come  in  panic-stricken  flight  from  Ant- 
werp, utterly  destitute,  and  Holland  was 
choked  with  these  starving  families.  But 
their  plight  was  not  so  bad  at  that  time  as 
that  of  the  millions  of  French  and  Belgian 
inhabitants  who  had  not  escaped  by  quick 
flight  from  the  advancing  tide  of  war,  but  had 
been  made  civil  prisoners  behind  the  enemy 
lines.  Their  rescue  was  more  difficult  be- 
cause of  the  needs  of  the  German  army,  which 


161 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

requisitioned  the  produce  and  the  labor  of 
the  peasants  and  work-people,  so  that  they 
were  cut  off  from  the  means  of  life.  The 
United  States  was  quick  to  understand  and 
to  act,  and  in  Mr.  Hoover  it  had  a  man 
able  to  translate  the  generous  emotion  in 
the  heart  of  a  great  people  into  practical 
action.  I  saw  him  in  his  offices  at  Rotter- 
dam, dictating  his  orders  to  his  staff  of 
clerks,  and  organizing  a  scheme  of  relief 
which  spread  its  life-giving  influence  over 
great  tracts  of  Europe  where  war  had  passed. 
My  conversation  with  him  was  brief,  but 
long  enough  to  let  me  see  the  masterful  char- 
acter, the  irresistible  energy,  the  cool,  un- 
emotional efficiency  of  this  great  business 
man  whose  brain  and  soul  were  in  his  job. 
It  was  in  the  arena  of  war  that  I  and  many 
others  saw  the  result  of  American  generosity. 
After  the  battles  of  the  Somme,  when  the 
Germans  fell  back  in  a  wide  retreat  under 
the  pressure  of  the  British  army,  many  ruined 
villages  fell  into  our  hands,  and  among  the 
ruins  many  French  civilians,.  To  this  day  I 
remember  the  thrill  I  had  when  in  some  of 
those  bombarded  places  I  saw  the  sign- 
boards of  the  American  Relief  over  wooden 
shanties  where  half -starved  men  and  women 

162 


AMERICANS  IN  EIJPOPE 

came  to  get  their  weekly  rations  which  had 
come  across  the  sea  and  by  some  miracle, 
as  it  seemed  to  them,  had  arrived  at  their 
village  close  to  the  firing-lines.  I  went  into 
those  places,  some  of  which  had  escaped 
from  shell-fire,  and  picked  up  the  tickets  for 
flour  and  candles  and  the  elementary  neces- 
sities of  life,  and  read  the  notices  directing 
the  people  how  to  take  their  share  of  these 
supplies,  and  thanked  God  that  somewhere 
in  the  world — away  in  the  United  States — 
the  spirit  of  charity  was  strong  to  help  the 
victims  of  the  cruelty  which  was  devastating 
Europe. 

An  immense  gratitude  for  America  was  in 
the  hearts  of  these  French  civilians.  What- 
ever causes  of  irritation  and  annoyance  may 
have  spoiled  the  fine  flower  of  the  enthu- 
siasm with  which  France  greeted  the  Ameri- 
can armies  when  they  first  landed  on  her 
coast,  and  the  admiration  of  the  American 
people  for  France  herself,  it  is  certain,  I 
think,  that  in  those  villages  which  were  en- 
girdled by  the  barbed  wire  of  the  hostile 
armies,  and  to  which  the  American  supplies 
came  in  days  of  dire  distress,  there  will  be  a 
lasting  reverence  for  the  name  of  America, 
which  was  the  fairy  godmother  of  so  many 

163 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

women  and  children.  Over  and  over  again 
these  women  told  me  of  their  gratitude. 
"Without  the  American  Relief,"  they  said, 
"we  should  have  starved  to  death."  Others 
said,  "The  only  thing  that  saved  us  was  the 
weekly  distribution  of  the  American  sup- 
plies." "There  has  been  no  kindness  in  our 
fate,"  said  one  of  them,  "except  the  bounty 
of  America." 

It  is  true  that  into  Mr.  Hoover's  ware- 
houses there  flowed  great  stores  of  food  from 
England,  Canada,  France,  and  other  coun- 
tries, who  gave  generously,  out  of  their  own 
needs,  for  the  sake  of  those  who  were  in 
greater  need,  but  the  largest  part  of  the  work 
was  America's,  and  hers  was  the  honor  of  its 
organization. 

In  the  face  of  that  noble  effort,  revealing 
the  enormous  pity  of  the  United  States  for 
suffering  people,  and  a  careless  expenditure 
of  that  "almighty  dollar"  which  now  the 
American  people  poured  into  this  abyss  of 
European  distress,  it  was  impossible  for 
France  or  England  to  accuse  the  United 
States  of  selfishness  or  of  callousness  be- 
cause she  still  held  back  from  any  declara- 
tion of  war  against  our  enemies. 

I  honestly  believe  (though  I  shall  not  be 

X64 


AMERICANS  IN  EUROPE 

believed  in  saying  so)  that  the  Americans 
who  came  over  to  Europe  at  this  time,  in 
the  Red  Cross  or  as  volunteers,  were  more 
impatient  of  that  delay  of  their  country's 
purpose  than  public  opinion  in  England.  I 
met  many  American  doctors,  nurses,  Red 
Cross  volunteers,  war  correspondents,  and 
business  men,  during  that  long  time  of  wait- 
ing when  President  Wilson  was  writing  his 
series  of  "Notes,"  and  I  could  see  how 
strained  was  their  patience  and  how  self- 
conscious  and  apologetic  they  were  because 
their  President  used  arguments  instead  of 
"direct  action. "  One  American  friend  of 
mine,  with  whom  I  often  used  to  walk  when 
streams  of  wounded  Tommies  were  a  bloody 
commentary  on  the  everlasting  theme  of 
war,  used  to  defend  Wilson  with  a  chivalrous 
devotion  and  wealth  of  argument.  "Give 
him  time,"  he  used  to  say.  "He  is  working 
slowly  but  surely  to  a  definite  conviction, 
and  when  he  has  made  up  his  mind  that  there 
is  no  alternative  not  all  the  devils  of  hell  will 
budge  him  from  his  course  of  action.  You 
English  must  be  patient  with  him  and  with 
all  of  us." 

"But,  my  dear  old  man,"  I  used  to  say, 
"we  are  patient.     It  is  you  who  are  impa- 

165 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

tient.  There  is  no  need  of  all  that  defensive 
argument.  England  realizes  the  difficulty  of 
President  Wilson  and  has  a  profound  rever- 
ence for  his  ideals." 

But  rny  friend  used  to  shake  his  head 
sadly. 

"You  are  always  guying  us,"  he  said. 
"Even  at  the  mess-table  your  young  officers 
fling  about  the  words  'too  proud  to  fight!' 
It  makes  it  very  hard  for  an  American  among 
you." 

That  was  true.  Our  young  officers,  and 
some  of  our  old  ones,  liked  to  "pull  the  leg" 
of  any  American  who  sat  at  table  with  them. 
They  made  jocular  remarks  about  President 
Wilson  as  a  complete  letter-writer.  That 
unfortunate  remark,  "too  proud  to  fight," 
was  too  good  to  miss  by  young  men  with  a 
careless  sense  of  humor.  It  came  in  with 
devilish  appropriateness  on  all  sorts  of  oc- 
casions, as  when  a  battery  of  ours  fired  off  a 
consignment  of  American  shells  in  which 
some  failed  to  explode. 

"They're  too  proud  to  fight,  sir,"  said  a 
subaltern,  addressing  the  major,  and  there 
was  a  roar  of  laughter  which  hurt  an  Ameri- 
can war  correspondent  in  English  uniform. 

The  English  sense  of  humor  remains  of 

166 


AMERICANS  IN  EUROPE 

schoolboy  character  among  any  body  of 
young  men  who  delight  in  a  little  playful 
"ragging,"  and  there  is  no  doubt  that  some 
of  us  were  not  sufficiently  aware  how  sensi- 
tive any  American  was  at  this  time,  and  how 
a  chance  word  spoken  in  jest  would  make  his 
nerves  jump. 

But  I  am  sure  that  the  main  body  of  Eng- 
lish opinion  was  not  impatient  with  America 
before  she  entered  the  war,  but,  on  the  con- 
trary, understood  the  difficulty  of  obtaining 
a  unanimous  spirit  over  so  vast  a  territory 
in  order  to  have  the  whole  nation  behind  the 
President.  Indeed  we  exaggerated  the  dif- 
ferences of  opinion  in  the  United  States 
and  made  a  bogy  of  the  alien  population  in 
the  great  "melting-pot."  It  seemed  to 
many  of  us  certain  that  if  America  declared 
war  against  Germany  there  would  be  civil 
riots  and  rebellions  on  a  serious  scale  among 
German- Americans.  That  thought  was  al- 
ways in  our  minds  when  we  justified  Wilson's 
philosophical  reluctance  to  draw  the  sword; 
that  and  a  very  general  belief  among  Eng- 
lish "intellectuals"  that  it  would  be  well  to 
have  one  great  nation  and  democracy  out- 
side the  arena  of  conflict,  free  from  the  war 
madness  that  had  taken  possession  of  Eu- 

12  167 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

rope,  to  act  as  arbitrator  if  no  decision 
could  be  obtained  in  the  battlefields.  It  is 
safe  to  say  now  that  in  spite  of  newspaper 
optimism,  engineered  by  the  propaganda 
departments,  there  were  many  competent 
observers  in  the  army  as  well  as  in  the  coun- 
try who  were  led  to  the  belief,  after  the  first 
eighteen  months  of  strife,  that  the  war 
would  end  in  a  deadlock  and  that  its  con- 
tinuance would  only  lead  to  further  years  of 
mutual  extermination.  For  that  reason  they 
looked  to  the  American  people,  under  the 
leadership  of  President  Wilson,  as  the  only 
neutral  power  which  could  intervene  to  save 
the  civilization  of  Europe,  not  by  military 
acts,  but  by  a  call  back  to  sanity  and 
conciliation. 

It  was  not  until  the  downfall  of  Russia 
and  the  approaching  menace  of  an  immense 
concentration  of  German  divisions  on  the 
western  front  that  France  and  England 
began  to  look  across  the  Atlantic  with 
anxious  eyes  for  military  aid.  Our  immense 
losses  and  the  complete  elimination  of  Russia 
gave  the  Germans  a  chance  of  striking  us 
mortal  blows  before  their  own  man-power 
was  exhausted.  The  vast  accession  of  power 
that  would  come  to  us  if  the  United  States 

168 


AMERICANS  IN  EUROPE 

mobilized  her  manhood  and  threw  them 
into  the  scale  was  realized  and  coveted  by 
our  military  leaders,  but  even  after  America's 
declaration  of  war  the  imagination  of  the 
rank  and  file  in  England  and  France  was  not 
profoundly  stirred  by  a  new  hope  of  support. 
Vaguely  we  heard  of  the  tremendous  whirl- 
wind efforts  "over  there"  to  raise  and  equip 
armies,  but  there  wras  hardly  a  man  that  I 
met  who  really  believed  in  his  soul  that  he 
would  ever  hear  the  tramp  of  American 
battalions  up  our  old  roads  of  war  or  see 
the  Stars  and  Stripes  fluttering  over  head- 
quarters in  France.  Our  men  knew  that  at 
the  quickest  it  would  take  a  year  to  raise 
and  train  an  American  army,  and  in  1917 
the  thought  of  another  year  of  war  seemed 
fantastic,  incredible,  impossible.  We  be- 
lieved— many  of  us — that  before  that  year 
had  passed  the  endurance  of  European 
armies  and  peoples  would  be  at  an  end,  and 
that  in  some  way  or  other,  by  German  defeat 
or  general  exhaustion,  peace  would  come. 
To  American  people  that  may  seem  like 
weakness  of  soul.  In  a  way  it  was  weakness, 
but  justified  by  the  superhuman  strain  wrhich 
our  men  had  endured  so  long.  Week  after 
week,  month  after  month,  year  after  year, 

169 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

they  had  gone  into  the  fields  of  massacre,  and 
strong  battalions  had  come  out  with  frightful 
losses,  to  be  made  up  again  by  new  drafts 
and  to  be  reduced  again  after  another  spell 
in  the  trenches  or  a  few  hours  "over  the  top." 
It  is  true  they  destroyed  an  equal  number  of 
Germans,  but  Germany  seemed  to  have  an 
inexhaustible  supply  of  "gun-fodder."  Only 
extreme  optimists,  and  generally  those  who 
were  most  ignorant,  prophesied  an  absolute 
smash  of  the  enemy's  defensive  power.  By 
the  end  of  1917,  when  the  British  alone  had 
lost  800,000  men  in  the  fields  of  Flanders,  the 
thought  that  another  year  still  might  pass 
before  the  end  of  the  war  seemed  too  horrible 
to  entertain  by  men  who  were  actually  in  the 
peril  and  misery  of  this  conflict.  Not  even 
then  did  it  seem  likely  that  the  Americans 
could  be  in  before  the  finish.  It  was  only 
when  the  startling  meance  of  a  new  German 
offensive,  in  a  last  and  mighty  effort,  threat- 
ened our  weakened  lines  that  England  be- 
came impatient  at  last  for  American  legions 
and  sent  out  a  call  across  the  Atlantic, 
"Come  quickly  or  you  will  come  too  late!" 
America  was  ready.  In  a  year  she  had 
raised  the  greatest  army  in  the  world  by  a 
natural  energy  which  was  terrific  in  its  con- 

170 


AMERICANS  IN  EUROPE 

centration  and  enthusiasm.  We  knew  that 
if  she  could  get  those  men  across  the  Atlantic, 
in  spite  of  submarines,  the  Germans  would  be 
broken  to  bits,  unless  they  could  break  us 
first  by  a  series  of  rapid  blows  which  would 
outpace  the  coming  of  the  American  troops. 
We  did  not  believe  that  possible.  Even 
when  the  enemy  broke  through  the  British 
lines  in  March  of  1918,  with  one  hundred  and 
fourteen  divisions  to  our  forty-eight,  we  did 
not  believe  they  would  destroy  our  armies  or 
force  us  to  the  coast.  Facts  showed  that  our 
belief  was  right,  though  it  was  a  touch-and- 
go  chance.  We  held  our  lines  and  England 
sent  out  her  last  reserves  of  youth — 300,000 
of  them — to  fill  up  our  gaps.  The  Germans 
were  stopped  at  a  dead  halt,  exhausted  after 
the  immensity  of  their  effort  and  by  prodi- 
gious losses.  Behind  our  lines,  and  behind  the 
French  front,  there  came  now  a  tide  of  "new 
boys."  America  was  in  France,  and  the  doom 
of  the  German  war  machine  was  at  hand. 
It  would  be  foolish  of  me  to  recapitulate 
the  history  of  the  American  campaign.  The 
people  of  the  United  States  know  what  their 
men  did  in  valor  and  in  achievement,  and 
Europe  has  not  forgotten  their  heroism. 
Here  I  will  rather  describe  as  far  as  I  may 

171 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

the  impressions  created  in  my  own  mind  by 
the  first  sight  of  those  American  soldiers  and 
by  those  I  met  on  the  battle-front. 

The  very  first  "bunch"  of  "Yanks"  (as 
we  called  them)  that  I  met  in  the  field  were 
non-combatants  who  suddenly  found  them- 
selves in  a  tight  corner.  They  belonged  to 
some  sections  of  engineers  who  were  working 
on  light  railways  in  the  neighborhood  of  two 
villages  called  Gouzeaucourt  and  Fins,  in 
the  Cambrai  district.  On  the  morning  of 
November  30,  1917,  I  went  up  very  early 
with  the  idea  of  going  through  Gouzeaucourt 
to  the  front  line,  three  miles  ahead,  which 
we  had  just  organized  after  Byng's  surprise 
victory  of  November  20th,  when  we  broke 
through  the  Hindenburg  lines  with  squadrons 
of  tanks,  and  rounded  up  thousands  of 
prisoners  and  many  guns.  As  I  went  through 
Fins  toward  Gouzeaucourt  I  was  aware  of 
some  kind  of  trouble.  The  men  of  some 
labor  battalions  were  tramping  back  in  a 
strange,  disorganized  way,  and  a  number  of 
field  batteries  were  falling  back. 

"What's  up?"  I  asked,  and  a  young  officer 
answered  me. 

"The  Germans  have  made  a  surprise 
attack  and  broken  through." 

172 


AMERICANS  IN  EUROPE 

"Where  are  they?"  I  asked  again,  startled 
by  this  news. 

He  pointed  up  the  road. 

"Just  there.  .  .  .  Inside  Gouzeaucourt." 

The  situation  was  extremely  unpleasant. 
The  enemy  had  brought  up  some  field-guns 
and  was  scattering  his  fire.  It  was  in  a  field 
close  by  that  I  met  the  American  engineers. 

"I  guess  this  is  not  in  the  contract,"  said 
one  of  them,  grinning.  "All  the  same,  if  I 
find  any  Britisher  to  lend  me  a  rifle  I'll  get 
a  knock  at  those  fellers  who  spoiled  my 
breakfast." 

One  man  stooped  for  a  petrol  tin  and  put  it 
on  his  head  as  a  shell  came  howling  over  us. 

"I  guess  this  makes  me  look  more  like  you 
other  guys,"  he  said,  with  a  glance  at  our 
steel  helmets. 

One  tall,  loose-limbed,  swarthy  fellow,  who 
looked  like  a  Mexican,  but  came  from  Texas, 
as  he  told  me,  was  spoiling  for  a  fight,  and 
with  many  strange  oaths  declared  his  inten- 
tion of  going  into  Gouzeaucourt  with  the 
first  batch  of  English  who  would  go  that  way 
with  him.  They  were  the  Grenadier  Guards 
who  came  up  to  the  counter-attack,  munch- 
ing apples,  as  I  remember,  when  they 
marched  toward  the  enemy.     Some  of  the 

173 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

American  engineers  joined  them  and  with 
borrowed  rifles  helped  to  clear  out  the  en- 
emy's machine-gun  nests  and  recapture  the 
ruins  of  the  village.  I  met  some  of  them  the 
following  day  again,  and  they  told  me  it 
was  a  "darned  good  scrap."  They  were 
"darned"  good  men,  hard,  tough,  humorous, 
and  full  of  individual  character. 

The  general  type  of  young  Americans  was 
not,  however,  like  these  hard-grained  men 
of  middle  age  who  had  led  an  adventurous 
life  before  they  came  to  see  what  war  wras 
like  in  Europe.  We  watched  them  curiously 
as  the  first  battalions  came  streaming  along 
the  old  roads  of  France  and  Picardy,  and 
we  were  conscious  that  they  were  different 
from  all  the  men  and  all  the  races  behind  our 
battle-front.  Physically  they  were  splendid 
— those  boys  of  the  Twenty-seventh  and 
Seventy-seventh  Divisions  whom  we  saw 
first  of  all.  They  were  taller  than  any  of  our 
regiments,  apart  from  the  Guards,  and  they 
had  a  fine,  easy  swing  of  body  as  they  came 
marching  along.  They  were  better  dressed 
than  our  Tommies,  whose  rough  khaki  was 
rather  shapeless.  There  was  a  dandy  cut 
about  this  American  uniform  and  the  cloth 
was  of  good  quality,  so  that,  arriving  fresh, 

174 


AMERICANS  IN  EUROPE 

they  looked  wonderfully  spruce  and  neat 
compared  with  our  weatherworn,  battle- 
battered  lads  who  had  been  fighting  through 
some  hard  and  dreadful  days.  But  those 
accidental  differences  did  not  matter.  What 
was  more  interesting  was  the  physiognomy 
and  character  of  these  young  men  who,  by  a 
strange  chapter  of  history,  had  come  across 
the  wide  Atlantic  to  prove  the  mettle  of 
their  race  and  the  power  of  their  nation  in 
this  world  struggle.  It  came  to  me,  and  to 
many  other  Englishmen,  as  a  revelation  that 
there  was  an  American  type,  distinctive, 
clearly  marked  off  from  our  own,  utterly 
different  from  the  Canadians,  Australians, 
and  New-Zeal anders,  as  strongly  racial  as 
the  French  or  Italians.  In  whatever  uni- 
form those  men  had  been  marching  one  would 
have  known  them  as  Americans.  Looking 
down  a  marching  column,  we  saw  that  it  was 
something  in  the  set  of  the  eyes,  in  the 
character  of  the  cheek-bones,  and  in  the 
facial  expression  that  made  them  distinctive. 
They  had  a  look  of  independence  and  self- 
reliance,  and  it  was  as  visible  as  the  sun  that 
these  were  men  with:  a  sort  of  national  pride 
and  personal  pride,  conscious  that  behind 
them  was  a  civilization  and  a  power  which 

175 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

would  give  them  victory  though  they  in  the 
vanguard  might  die.  Those  words  express 
feebly  and  foolishly  the  first  impression  that 
came  to  us  when  the  "Yanks"  came  march- 
ing up  the  roads  of  war,  but  that  in  a  broad 
way  was  the  truth  of  what  we  thought.  I 
remember  one  officer  of  ours  summed  up 
these  ideas  as  he  stood  on  the  edge  of  the 
road,  watching  one  of  those  battalions 
passing  with  their  transport. 

"What  we  are  seeing,"  he  said,  "is  the 
greatest  thing  that  has  happened  in  history 
since  the  Norman  Conquest.  It  Is  the  ar- 
rival of  America  in  Europe.  Those  boys  are 
coming  to  fulfill  the  destiny  of  a  people 
which  for  three  hundred  years  has  been  pre- 
paring, building,  growing,  for  the  time  when 
it  will  dominate  the  world.  Those  young 
soldiers  will  make  many  mistakes.  They 
will  be  mown  down  in  their  first  attacks. 
They  will  throw  away  their  lives  recklessly, 
because  of  their  freshness  and  ignorance. 
But  behind  them  are  endless  waves  of  other 
men  of  their  own  breed  and  type.  Germany 
will  be  destroyed  because  her  man-power  is 
already  exhausted,  and  she  cannot  resist  the 
weight  which  America  will  now  throw  against 
her.     But  by  this  victory,  which  will  leave 

176 


AMERICANS  IN  EUROPE 

all  the  old  Allies  weakened  and  spent  and 
licking  their  wounds,  America  will  be  the 
greatest  power  in  the  world,  and  will  hold 
the  destiny  of  mankind  in  her  grasp.  Those 
boys  slogging  through  the  dust  are  like  the 
Roman  legionaries.  With  them  marches 
the  fate  of  the  world,  of  which  they  are 
masters." 

"A  good  thing  or  a  bad?"  I  asked  my 
friend. 

He  made  a  circle  in  the  dust  with  his 
trench  stick,  and  stared  into  the  center  of  it. 

"Who  can  tell?"  he  said,  presently.  "Was 
it  good  or  bad  that  the  Romans  conquered 
Europe,  or  that  afterward  they  fell  before 
the  barbarians?  Was  it  good  or  bad  that 
William  and  his  Normans  conquered  Eng- 
land? .  .  .  There  is  no  good  or  bad  in  history; 
there  is  only  change,  building-up,  and  dis- 
integrating, new  cycles  of  energy,  decay,  and 
rebirth.  After  this  war,  which  those  lads 
will  help  to  win,  the  power  will  pass  to  the 
west,  and  Europe  will  fall  Into  the  second 
class." 

Those  were  high  views.  Thinking  less  in 
prophecy,  getting  into  touch  with  the  actual 
men,  I  was  struck  by  the  exceptionally  high 
level  of  individual  intelligence  among  the 

177 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

rank  and  file,  and  by  the  general  gravity 
among  them.  The  American  private  soldier 
seemed  to  me  less  repressed  by  discipline 
than  our  men.  He  had  more  original  points 
of  view,  expressed  himself  with  more  inde- 
pendence of  thought,  and  had  a  greater  sense 
of  his  own  personal  value  and  dignity.  He 
was  immensely  ignorant  of  European  life 
and  conditions,  and  our  Tommies  were  su- 
perior to  him  in  that  respect.  Nor  had  he 
their  easy  way  of  comradeship  with  French 
and  Flemish  peasants,  their  whimsical  philos- 
ophy of  life  which  enabled  them  to  make  a 
joke  in  the  foulest  places  and  conditions. 
They  were  harder,  less  sympathetic;  in  a 
way,  I  think,  less  imaginative  and  spiritual 
than  English  or  French.  They  had  no  tol- 
erance with  foreign  habits  or  people.  After 
their  first  look  round  they  had  very  little  use 
for  France  or  the  French.  The  language 
difficulty  balked  them  at  the  outset  and  they 
did  not  trouble  much  to  cope  with  it,  though 
I  remember  some  of  the  boys  sitting  under 
the  walls  of  French  villages  with  small  chil- 
dren who  read  out  words  in  conversation- 
books  and  taught  them  to  pronounce.  They 
had  a  fierce  theoretical  hatred  of  the  Ger- 
mans, who,  they  believed,  were  bad  men,  in 

178 


AMERICANS  IN  EUROPE 

the  real  old-fashioned  style  of  devil  incarnate, 
so  that  it  was  up  to  every  American  soldier 
to  kill  Germans  in  large  numbers.  It  was 
noticeable  that  after  the  armistice,  when 
the  American  troops  were  billeted  among 
German  civilians,  that  hatred  wore  off  very 
quickly,  as  it  did  with  the  English  Tommies, 
human  nature  being  stronger  than  war  pas- 
sion. Before  they  had  been  in  the  fighting- 
line  a  week  these  "new  boys"  had  no  il- 
lusions left  about  the  romance  or  the  adven- 
ture of  modern  war.  They  hated  shell-fire 
as  all  soldiers  hate  it,  they  loathed  the 
filth  of  the  trenches,  and — they  were  very 
homesick. 

I  remember  one  private  soldier  who  had 
fought  in  the  American-Spanish  war  and  in 
the  Philippines — an  old  "tough." 

"Three  weeks  of  this  war,"  he  said,  "is 
equal  to  three  years  of  all  others." 

But  he  and  "the  pups,"  as  he  called  his 
younger  comrades,  were  going  to  see  it 
through,  and  they  were  animated  by  the 
same  ideals  with  which  the  French  and 
British  had  gone  into  the  war. 

"This  is  a  fight  for  civilization,"  said  one 
man,  and  another  said,  "There'll  be  no 
liberty  in  the  world  if  the  Germans  win." 

179 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

It  is  natural  that  many  of  the  boys  were 
full  of  "buck"  before  they  saw  the  real  thing, 
and  were  rather  scornful  of  the  British  and 
French  troops,  who  had  been  such  a  long 
time  "doing  nothing,"  as  they  said. 

"You've  been  kidding  yourselves  that  you 
know  how  to  fight,"  said  one  of  them  to  an 
English  Tommy.  "We've  come  to  show 
you! 

That  was  boys'  talk,  like  our  "ragging," 
and  was  not  meant  seriously.  On  the  con- 
trary, the  companies  of  the  Twenty-seventh 
Division  who  went  into  action  with  the 
Australians  at  Hamel  near  Amiens — the 
first  time  that  American  troops  were  in 
action  in  France — were  filled  with  admira- 
tion for  the  stolid  way  in  which  those  veter- 
ans played  cards  in  their  dugouts  before 
going  over  the  top  at  dawn.  The  American 
boys  were  tense  and  strained,  knowing  that 
in  a  few  hours  they  would  be  facing  death. 
But  when  the  time  came  they  went  away 
like  greyhounds,  and  were  reckless  of  fire. 

"They'll  go  far  when  they've  learned  a 
bit,"  said  the  Australians. 

They  had  to  learn  the  usual  lessons  in  the 
same  old  way,  by  mistakes,  by  tragedy,  by 
lack  of  care.     They  overcrowded  their  for- 

180 


AMERICANS  IN  EUROPE 

ward  trenches  so  that  they  suffered  more 
heavily  than  they  should  have  done  under 
enemy  shell-fire.  They  advanced  in  the 
open  against  machine-gun  nests  and  were 
mown  down.  They  went  ahead  too  fast 
without  "mopping  up"  the  ground  behind 
them,  and  on  the  day  they  helped  to  break 
the  Hindenburg  line  they  did  not  clear  out 
the  German  dugouts,  and  the  Germans  came 
out  with  their  machine-guns  and  started 
fighting  in  the  rear,  so  that  when  the  Aus- 
tralians came  up  in  support  they  had  to 
capture  the  ground  again,  and  lost  many 
men  before  they  could  get  in  touch  with  the 
Americans  ahead.  For  some  time  the  Amer- 
ican transport  system  broke  down,  so  that 
the  fighting  troops  did  not  always  obtain 
their  supplies  on  the  field  of  battle,  and  there 
were  other  errors,  inevitable  in  an  army 
starting  a  great  campaign  with  inexperienced 
staff  officers.  What  never  failed  was  the 
gallantry  of  the  troops,  which  reached  heights 
of  desperate  valor  in  the  forest  of  the 
Argonne. 

The  officers  were  tremendously  in  earnest. 
What  struck  us  most  was  their  gravity. 
Our  officers  took  their  responsibility  lightly, 
laughed  and  joked  more  readily,  and  had  a 

181 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

boyish,  whimsical  sense  of  humor.  It  seemed 
to  us,  perhaps  quite  wrongly,  that  the  Ameri- 
can officers  were  not,  on  the  whole,  of  a 
merry  disposition.  They  were  frank  and 
hearty,  but  as  they  walked  about  their  bil- 
leting area  behind  the  lines  some  of  them 
looked  rather  solemn  and  grim,  and  our 
young  men  were  nervous  of  them.  I  think 
that  was  simply  a  matter  of  facial  expression 
plus  a  pair  of  spectacles,  for  on  closer  ac- 
quaintance one  found,  invariably,  that  an 
American  officer  was  a  human  soul,  utterly 
devoid  of  swank,  simpje,  straight,  and  de- 
lightfully courteous.  Their  modesty  was  at 
times  almost  painful.  They  were  over- 
anxious to  avoid  hurting  the  feelings  of 
French  or  British  by  any  appearance  of  self- 
conceit.  "We  don't  know  a  darned  thing 
about  this  war,"  said  many  of  them,  so  that 
the  phrase  became  familiar  to  us.  "We 
have  come  here  to  learn." 

Well,  they  learned  pretty  quickly  and 
there  were  some  things  they  did  not  need 
teaching — courage,  endurance,  pride  of  man- 
hood, pride  of  race.  They  were  not  going  to 
let  down  the  Stars  and  Stripes,  though  all 
hell  was  against  them.  They  won  a  new 
glory  for  the  Star-spangled  Banner,  and  it 

182 


AMERICANS  IN  EUROPE 

was  the  weight  they  threw  in  and  the  valor 
that  went  with  it  which,  with  the  French 
and  British  armies  attacking  all  together, 
under  the  directing  genius  of  Foch,  helped  to 
break  the  German  war  machine  and  to 
achieve  decisive  and  supreme  victory. 

It  would  have  been  better,  I  think,  for 
America  and  for  all  of  us,  especially  for 
France,  if  quickly  after  victory  the  American 
troops  had  gone  back  again.  That  was  im- 
possible because  of  holding  the  Rhine  and 
enforcing  the  terms  of  peace.  But  during 
the  long  time  that  great  bodies  of  American 
troops  remained  in  France  after  the  day  of 
armistice,  there  was  occasion  for  the  bigness 
of  ideals  and  achievements  to  be  whittled 
down  by  the  little  nagging  annoyances  of  a 
rather  purposeless  existence.  Boredom,  im- 
mense and  long  enduring,  took  possession  of 
the  American  army  in  France.  The  boys 
wanted  to  go  home,  now  that  the  job  was 
done.  They  wanted  the  victory  march  down 
Fifth  Avenue,  not  the  lounging  life  in  little 
French  villages,  nor  even  the  hectic  gayeties 
of  leave  in  Paris.  Old  French  chateaux 
used  as  temporary  headquarters  suffered 
from  successive  waves  of  occupation  by 
officers  who  proceeded  to  modernize  their 

13  183 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

surroundings  by  plugging  old  panels  for 
electric  light  and  fixing  up  telephone-wires 
through  painted  ceilings,  to  the  horror  of  the 
concierges  and  the  scandal  of  the  neighbor- 
hood. In  the  restaurants  and  hotels  and 
cinema  halls  the  Americans  trooped  in,  took 
possession  of  all  the  tables,  shouted  at  the 
waiters  who  did  not  seem  to  know  their 
jobs,  and  expressed  strong  views  in  loud 
voices  (understood  by  French  civilians  who 
had  learned  English  in  the  war)  about  the 
miserable  quality  of  French  food  and  the 
darned  arrogance  of  French  officers.  It  was 
all  natural  and  inevitable — but  unfortunate. 
The  French  were  too  quick  to  forget  after 
armistice  that  they  owed  a  good  deal  to 
American  troops  for  the  complete  defeat  of 
Germany.  The  Americans  were  not  quite 
careful  in  remembering  the  susceptibilities 
of  a  sensitive  people.  So  there  were  disil- 
lusion and  irritation  on  both  sides,  in  a  broad 
and  general  way,  allowing  for  many  in- 
dividual friendships  between  French  and 
Americans,  many  charming  memories  which 
will  remain  on  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic 
when  the  war  is  old  in  history. 

Americans    who    overcame   the   language 
difficulty  by  learning  enough  to  exchange 

184 


AMERICANS  IN  EUROPE 

views  with  the  French  inhabitants — and 
there  were  many — were  able  to  overlook  the 
minor,  petty  things  which  divided  the  two 
races,  and  were  charmed  with  the  intelli- 
gence, spirit,  and  humor  of  the  French  bour- 
geoisie and  educated  classes.  They  got  the 
best  out  of  France,  and  were  enchanted  with 
French  cathedrals,  mediaeval  towns,  picture- 
galleries,  and  life.  Paris  caught  hold  of 
them,  as  it  takes  hold  of  all  men  and  women 
who  know  something  of  its  history  and  learn 
to  know  and  love  its  people.  Thousands  of 
American  officers  came  to  know  Paris  in- 
timately, from  Montmartre  to  Montparnasse, 
became  familiar  arid  welcome  friends  in  little 
restaurants  tucked  away  in  the  side-streets, 
where  they  exchanged  badinage  with  the 
proprietor  and  the  waitresses,  and  felt  the 
spirit  of  Paris  creep  into  their  bones  and 
souls.  Along  the  Grands  Boulevards  these 
young  men  from  America  watched  the  pag- 
eant of  life  pass  by  as  they  sat  outside  the 
cafes,  studying  the  little  high-heeled  ladies 
who  passed  by  with  a  side-glance  at  these 
young  men,  marveling  at  the  strange  medley 
of  uniforms,  as  French,  English,  Australian, 
New  Zealand,  Canadian,  Italian,  Portu- 
guese, and  African  soldiers  went  by,  realizing 

185 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

the  meaning  of  "Europe"  with  all  its  races 
and  rivalries  and  national  traditions,  and 
getting  to  know  the  inside  of  European 
politics  by  conversations  with  men  who 
spoke  with  expert  knowledge  about  this  con- 
glomeration of  peoples.  Those  young  men 
who  are  now  back  in  the  United  States 
have  already  made  a  difference  to  their 
country's  intellectual  outlook.  They  have 
taught  America  to  look  out  upon  the  world 
with  wider  vision  and  to  abandon  the  old  iso- 
lation of  American  thought  which  was  apt  to 
ignore  the  rest  of  the  human  family  and  re- 
main self-contained  and  aloof  from  a  world 
policy. 

During  the  months  that  followed  the 
armistice  many  Americans  of  high  intel- 
lectual standing  came  to  Europe,  attracted 
by  the  great  drama  and  business  of  the 
Peace  Conference,  and  to  prepare  the  way 
for  the  reconstruction  of  civilization  after 
the  years  of  conflict.  They  were  states- 
men, bankers,  lawyers,  writers,  and  finan- 
ciers. I  met  some  of  them  in  Paris,  Rome, 
Vienna,  London,  and  other  cities  of  Europe. 
They  were  the  onlookers  and  the  critics  of 
the  new  conflict  that  had  followed  the  old, 
the   conflict   of   ideas,   policy,   and   passion 

186 


AMERICANS  IN  EUROPE 

which  raged  outside  the  quiet  chamber  at 
Versailles,  where  President  Wilson,  Lloyd 
George,  Clemenceau,  and  a  few  less  im- 
portant mortals  were  redrawing  the  frontiers 
of  Europe,  Asia,  and  other  parts  of  the  globe. 
From  the  first,  many  of  these  men  were  frank 
in  private  conversation  about  the  hostility 
that  was  growing  up  in  the  United  States 
against  President  Wilson,  and  the  distrust  of 
the  American  people  in  a  league  of  nations 
which  might  involve  the  United  States  in 
European  entanglements  alien  to  her  inter- 
ests and  without  the  consent  of  her  people. 
At  the  same  time,  and  at  that  time  when 
there  still  seemed  to  be  a  chance  of  arriving 
at  a  new  compact  between  nations  which 
would  eliminate  the  necessity  of  world-wide 
war,  and  of  washing  out  the  blood-stains  of 
strife  by  new  springs  of  human  tolerance 
and  international  common  sense,  these  Amer- 
ican visitors  did  not  throw  down  the  general 
scheme  for  a  league  of  nations,  and  looked 
to  the  Peace  Conference  to  put  forward  a 
treaty  which  might  at  least  embody  the 
general  aspirations  of  stricken  peoples.  Grad- 
ually these  onlookers  sickened  with  disgust. 
They  sickened  at  the  interminable  delays  in 
the  work  of  the  Conference,  and  the  imperi- 

187 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

alistic  ambitions  of  the  Allied  powers,  and 
the  greedy  rivalries  of  the  little  nations,  at 
all  the  falsity  of  lip-service  to  high  principles 
while  hatred,  vengeance,  injustice,  and  sor- 
did interests  were  in  the  spirit  of  that  docu- 
ment which  might  have  been  the  new  Charter 
of  Rights  for  the  peoples  of  the  world. 
They  saw  that  Clemenceau's  vision  of  peace 
was  limited  to  the  immediate  degradation 
and  ruin  of  the  Central  Powers,  and  that  he 
did  not  care  for  safeguarding  the  future  or 
for  giving  liberty  and  justice  and  a  chance  of 
economic  life  to  democracies  liberated  from 
military  serfdom.  They  saw  that  Lloyd 
George  was  shifting  his  ground  continually 
as  pressure  was  brought  to  bear  on  him  now 
from  one  side  of  the  Cabinet  and  now  from 
the  other,  so  that  his  policy  was  a  strange 
compound  of  extreme  imperialism  and  demo- 
cratic idealism,  with  the  imperialist  ambition 
winning  most  of  the  time.  They  saw  that 
Wilson  was  being  hoodwinked  by  the  sub- 
tlety of  diplomatists  who  played  on  his 
vanity,  and  paid  homage  to  his  ideals,  and 
made  a  prologue  of  his  principles  to  a  drama 
of  injustice.  Our  American  visitors  were 
perplexed  and  distressed.  They  had  desired 
to  be  heart  and  soul  with  the  Allies  in  the 

188 


AMERICANS  IN  EUROPE 

settlement  of  peace.  They  still  cherished 
the  ideals  which  had  uplifted  them  in  the 
early  days  of  the  war.  They  were  resolved 
that  the  United  States  should  not  play  a 
selfish  part  in  the  settlement  or  profit  by 
the  distress  of  nations  who  had  been  hard 
hit.  But  gradually  they  became  disillu- 
sioned with  the  statecraft  of  Europe,  and 
disappointed  with  the  low  level  of  intelli- 
gence and  morality  reflected  in  the  news- 
paper press  of  Europe,  which  still  wrote  in 
the  old  strain  of  "propaganda"  when  insin- 
cerity and  manufactured  falsehood  took  the 
place  of  truth.  They  hardened  visibly,  I 
think,  against  the  view  that  the  United 
States  should  be  pledged  by  Wilson  to  the 
political  and  economic  schemes  of  the  big 
powers  in  Europe,  which,  far  from  healing 
the  wounds  of  the  world,  kept  them  raw  and 
bleeding,  while  arranging,  not  deliberately, 
but  very  certainly,  for  future  strife  into 
which  America  would  be  dragged  against 
her  will.  England  and  France  failed  to  see 
the  American  point  of  view,  which  seems  to 
me  reasonable  and  sound. 

The  generous  way  in  which  the  United 
States  came  to  the  rescue  of  starving  peoples 
in  the  early  days  of  the  war  was  not  deserted 

189 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

by  her  when  the  armistice  and  the  peace 
that  followed  revealed  the  frightful  distress 
in  Poland,  Hungary,  and  Austria.  While 
the  doom  of  these  people  was  being  pro- 
nounced by  statesmen  not  naturally  cruel, 
but  nevertheless  sentencing  great  popula- 
tions to  starvation,  and  while  the  blockade 
was  still  in  force,  American  representatives 
of  a  higher  law  than  that  of  vengeance  went 
into  these  ruined  countries  and  organized 
relief  on  a  great  scale  for  suffering  childhood 
and  despairing  womanhood.  I  saw  the 
work  of  the  American  Relief  Committee  in 
Vienna  and  remember  it  as  one  of  the  noblest 
achievements  I  have  seen.  All  ancient  en- 
mity, all  demands  for  punishment  or  repara- 
tion, went  down  before  the  agony  of  Austria. 
Vienna,  a  city  of  two  and  a  half  million  souls, 
once  the  capital  of  a  great  empire,  for  cen- 
turies a  rendezvous  of  gayety  and  genius, 
the  greatest  school  of  medicine  in  the  world, 
the  birthplace  and  home  of  many  great  mu- 
sicians, and  the  dwelling-place  of  a  happy, 
careless,  and  luxurious  people,  was  now  de- 
livered over  to  beggary  and  lingering  death. 
With  all  its  provinces  amputated  so  that  it 
was  cut  off  from  its  old  natural  resources  of 
food  and  raw  material,  it  had  no  means  of 

190 


AMERICANS  IN  EUROPE 

livelihood  and  no  hope.  Austrian  paper 
money  had  fallen  away  to  mere  trash.  The 
krone  tumbled  down  to  the  value  of  a  cent, 
and  it  needed  many  kronen  to  buy  any 
article  of  life — 2,000  for  a  suit  of  clothes, 
800  for  a  pair  of  boots,  25  for  the  smallest 
piece  of  meat  in  any  restaurant.  Middle- 
class  people  lived  almost  exclusively  on  cab- 
bage soup,  with  now  and  then  potatoes.  A 
young  doctor  I  met  had  a  salary  of  60  kronen 
a  wTeek.  When  I  asked  him  how  he  lived 
he  said:  "I  don't.  This  is  not  life."  The 
situation  goes  into  a  nutshell  when  I  say — 
as  an  actual  fact — that  the  combined  salaries 
of  the  Austrian  Cabinet  amounted,  according 
to  the  rate  of  exchange,  to  the  wages  of  three 
old  women  who  look  after  the  lavatories  in 
Lucerne.  Many  people,  once  rich,  lived  on 
bundles  of  paper  money  wrhich  they  flung 
away  as  leaves  are  scattered  from  autumn 
trees.  They  were  the  lucky  ones,  though 
ruin  stared  them  in  the  eyes.  By  smuggling, 
which  became  an  open  and  acknowledged 
system,  they  could  afford  to  pay  the  ever- 
mounting  prices  of  the  peasants  for  at  least 
enough  food  to  keep  themselves  alive.  But 
the  working-classes,  who  did  not  work  be- 
cause factories  were  closed  for  lack  of  coal 

191 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

and  raw  material,  just  starved,  keeping  the 
flame  of  life  aflicker  by  a  thin  and  miserable 
diet,  until  the  weakest  died.  Eighty-three 
per  cent,  of  the  children  had  rickets  in  an 
advanced  stage.  Children  of  three  and  four 
had  never  sat  up  or  walked.  Thousands  of 
children  were  just  living  skeletons,  with 
gaunt  cheek-bones  and  bloodless  lips.  They 
padded  after  one  in  the  street,  like  little  old 
monkeys,  holding  out  their  claws  for  alms. 
The  American  Relief  Committee  got  to 
work  in  the  early  months  of  1919.  They 
brought  truck-loads  of  food  to  Vienna, 
established  distributing  centers  and  feeding 
centers  in  old  Viennese  palaces,  and  when  I 
was  there  in  the  early  autumn  they  were 
giving  200,000  children  a  meal  a  day.  I 
went  round  these  places  with  a  young 
American  naval  officer — Lieutenant  Stock- 
ton— one  of  the  leading  organizers  of  relief, 
and  I  remember  him  as  one  of  the  best  types 
of  manhood  I  have  ever  met  up  and  down  the 
roads  of  life.  His  soul  was  in  his  job,  but 
there  was  nothing  sloppy  about  his  senti- 
ment or  his  system.  He  was  a  master  of 
organization  and  details  and  had  established 
the  machinery  of  relief,  with  Austrian  ladies 

doing  the  drudgery  with  splendid  devotion 

192      , 


AMERICANS  IN  EUROPE 

(as  he  told  me,  and  as  I  saw),  so  that  it  was 
in  perfect  working  order.  As  a  picture  of 
childhood  receiving  rescue  from  the  agony  of 
hunger,  I  remember  nothing  so  moving  nor 
so  tragic  as  one  of  those  scenes  when  I  saw 
a  thousand  children  sitting  down  to  the  meal 
that  came  from  America.  Here  before  them 
in  that  bowl  of  soup  was  life  and  warmth. 
In  their  eyes  there  was  the  light  of  ecstasy, 
the  spiritual  gratitude  of  children  for  the 
joy  that  had  come  after  pain.  For  a  little 
while  they  had  been  reprieved  from  the 
hunger-death. 

American  agents  of  the  Y.  M.  C.  A., 
nurses,  members  of  American  missions  and 
philanthropic  societies,  penetrated  Europe 
in  far  and  strange  places.  I  met  a  crowd  of 
them  on  the  "Entente  train"  from  Vienna 
to  Paris,  and  in  various  Italian  towns. 
They  were  all  people  with  shrewd,  observant 
eyes,  a  quiet  sense  of  humor,  and  a  repug- 
nance to  be  "fudged  off"  from  actual  facts 
by  any  humbug  of  theorists.  They  studied 
the  economic  conditions  of  the  countries 
through  which  they  traveled,  studied  poverty 
by  personal  visits  to  slum  areas  and  working- 
class  homes,  and  did  not  put  on  colored  spec- 
tacles to  stare  at  the  life  in  which  they  found 

193 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

themselves.  The  American  girls  were  as 
frank  and  courageous  as  the  men  in  their 
facing  of  naked  truth,  and  they  had  no  false 
prudery  or  sentimental  shrinking  from  the 
spectacre  of  pain  and  misery.  Their  greatest 
drawback  was  an  ignorance  of  foreign  lan- 
guages, which  prevented  many  of  them  from 
getting  more  than  superficial  views  of  na- 
tional psychology,  and  I  think  many  of 
them  suffered  from  the  defect  of  admirable 
qualities  by  a  humorous  contempt  of  foreign 
habits  and  ideas.  That  did  .not  make  them 
popular  with  people  whom  they  were  not 
^  directly  helping.  Their  hearty  laughter, 
their  bunching  together  in  groups  in  which 
conversation  was  apt  to  become  noisy,  and 
their  cheerful  disregard  of  conventionality  in 
places  where  Europeans  were  on  their  "best 
behavior"  had  an  irritating  effect  at  times 
upon  foreign  observers,  who  said:  "Those 
Americans  have  not  learned  good  manners. 
They  are  the  new  barbarians  in  Europe." 
English  people,  traveling  as  tourists  before 
the  war,  were  accused  of  the  same  lack  of 
respect  and  courtesy,  and  were  unpopular 
for  the  same  reason. 

Toward  the  end  of  1919  and  in  the  begin- 
ning of  1920  I  came  into  touch  with  a  number 

194 


AMERICANS  IN  EUROPE 

of  Americans  who  came  to  Europe  on 
business  enterprises  or  to  visit  the  battle- 
fields. In  private  conversation  they  did  not 
disguise  their  sense  of  distress  that  there 
were  strained  relations  between  the  public 
opinion  of  England  and  America.  Several  of 
them  asked  me  if  it  were  true  that  England 
was  as  hostile  to  America  as  the  newspapers 
tried  to  make  out.  By  way  of  answer  I  asked 
them  whether  America  were  as  hostile  to  us 
as  the  newspapers  asked  us  to  believe.  They 
admitted  at  once  that  this  was  a  just  and 
illuminating  reply,  because  the  intelligent 
section  of  American  society — people  of  de- 
cent education  and  good  will — was  far  from 
being  hostile  to  England,  but  on  the  con- 
trary believed  firmly  that  the  safety  and  hap- 
piness of  the  world  depended  a  good  deal 
upon  Anglo-American  friendship.  It  was 
true  that  the  average  citizen  of  the  United 
States,  even  if  he  were  uninfluenced  by  Irish- 
American  propaganda,  believed  that  England 
was  treating  Ireland  stupidly  and  unjustly — 
to  which  I  answered  that  the  majority  of 
English  people  agreed  with  that  view,  though 
realizing  the  difficulty  of  satisfying  Ireland 
by  any  measure  short  of  absolute  indepen- 
dence  and   separation.     It   was   also   true, 

195 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 

they  told  me,  that  there  was  a  general  sus- 
picion in  the  United  States  that  England 
had;  made  a  big  grab  in  the  peace  terms  for 
imperial  aggrandizement,  masked  under  the 
high-sounding  name  of  "mandate"  for  the 
protection  of  African  and  Oriental  states. 
My  reply  to  that,  not  as  a  political  argument, 
but  as  simple  sincerity,  was  the  necessity  of 
some  control  of  such  states,  if  the  power  of 
the  Turk  were  to  be  abolished  from  his  old 
strongholds,  and  a  claim  for  the  British 
tradition  as  an  administrator  of  native  races ; 
but  I  added  another  statement  which  my 
American  friends  found  it  hard  to  believe, 
though  it  is  the  absolute  truth,  as  nine  Eng- 
lishmen out  of  ten  will  affirm.  So  far  from 
desiring  an  extension  of  our  empire,  the  vast 
•and  overwhelming  majority  of  British  people, 
not  only  in  England,  but  in  our  dominions 
beyond  the  seas,  are  aghast  at  the  new  re- 
sponsibilities which  we  have  undertaken, 
and  would  relinquish  many  of  them,  espe- 
cially in  Asia,  with  a  sense  of  profound  relief. 
We  have  been  saddled  with  new  and  perilous 
burdens  by  the  ambition  of  certain  statesmen 
who  have  earned  the  bitter  animosity  of  the 
great  body  of  the  British  people  entirely  out 
of  sympathy  with  their  imperialistic  ideals,/ 

196 


AMERICANS  IN  EUROPE 

I  have  not  encountered  a  single  American 
in  Europe  who  has  not  expressed,  with  what  I 
believe  is  absolute  sincerity,  a  friendly  and 
affectionate  regard  for  England,  whose  people 
and  whose  ways  of  life  they  like,  and  whose 
language,  literature,  and  ideals  belong  to  our 
united  civilization.  They  have  not  found  in 
England  any  of  that  hostility  which  they 
were  told  to  expect,  apart  from  a  few  black- 
guardly articles  in  low-class  journals.  On 
the  contrary,  they  have  found  a  friendly 
folk,  grateful  for  their  help  in  the  war,  full 
of  admiration  for  American  methods,  and 
welcoming  them  to  our  little  old  island. 

They  have  gone  back  to  the  United  States 
with  the  conviction,  which  I  share,  with  all 
my  soul,  that  commercial  rivalry,  political 
differences,  and  minor  irritations,  inevitable 
between  two  progressive  peoples  of  strong 
character,  must  never  be  allowed  to  divide 
our  two  nations,  who  fundamentally  belong 
to  the  same  type  of  civilization  and  to  the 
same  code  of  principles.  Most  of  the  so- 
called  hostility  between  us  is  the  mere  froth 
of  foul-mouthed  men  on  both  sides,  and  the 
rest  of  it  is  due  to  the  ignorance  of  the  masses. 
We  must  get  to  know  each  other,  as  the 
Americans  in  Europe  have  learned  to  know 

197 


PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY  * 

us  and  to  like  us,  and  as  all  of  us  who  have 
crossed  the  Atlantic  the  other  way  about 
have  learned  to  know  and  like  the  American 
people.  For  the  sake  of  the  future  of  the 
world  and  all  the  hopes  of  humanity  we  must 
get  to  the  heart  of  each  other  and  establish 
a  lasting  and  unbreakable  friendship.  It  is 
only  folly  that  will  prevent  us. 


THE   END 


Return  to  desk  from  which  borrowed. 
This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  statnpedbeiow. 

JAN  28  1948 


USE 


LD21- 


-100m-9,'47(A5702sl6)476 


/- 


